Animated .GIF: Video or Image?

By I am Reid
in Poll Station

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.GIF  

103 members have voted

  1. 1. Animated .GIF?

    • Video
      10
    • Image
      93

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  • 4 weeks later...
Neowinian

ganjamigo

Posted
Posted
a gif is a container file, not a video or an image

the thing it contains could be an image

or the things it contains could make a video

what kind of video file isn't a container file?

An image is a single frame from any source of media, be it an animated gif, an avi, streamed media, or whatever it is. While video is any set of single images played in a serialized manner, regardless of sound, or file format.

Animated gifs can contain and play images/frames, played together to make video.

Animated gifs however do not contain a sound layer, as most standard video container files tend to.

And for the record, while animated gifs can only show 256 colors, they can be any 256 colors from the 16 bit color palette, unlike standard 256 color graphics.

Neowinian

Wolter

Posted
Posted (edited)
what kind of video file isn't a container file?

A video doesn't have to be a file. It can be contained on a VHS, Beta, or 3/4 inch cassette, or even a roll of film.

And what kind of file isn't considered a container, anyway? All files contain bytes (except for empty files).

Edited by Wolter
Neowinian

xor4200

Posted
Posted
Adobe Photoshop CS4 says it is an image. Paint.net says that it is an image. MS Paint says that it is an image. Show me one graphics program that shows it as a Video file.

A format that can display video is a video format.

But since it was originally intended to be an image format, it's both.

Grand Master

I am Reid

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Wrong, if this were true then I would be able to play a .gif file in WMP.

Thats not a very good argument.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 says it is an image. Paint.net says that it is an image. MS Paint says that it is an image. Show me one graphics program that shows it as a Video file.

Yes, everyone understands that. That is not the issue. The issue is that a .gif meets every requirement to be a video, but no one considers it to be one. Why not?

Grand Master

Nicholas-c Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted (edited)

"image/gif"

Looks like an image here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format

"Animation" would be the correct term really, Video isn't appropriate, Video usually has audio.

Edited by Nicholas-c
Neowinian

xor4200

Posted
Posted
"image/gif"

Looks like an image here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format

"Animation" would be the correct term really, Video isn't appropriate, Video usually has audio.

Video without audio is video.

If I film something in vintage silent film stock, it is video.

Video comes from the Latin videre (to see).

Grand Master

Angel Blue01

Posted
Posted

What a stupid question, a video by definition you can pause, rewind (random access in the past), fastforward (random access forward), maybe even change the playback speed backwards and forwards. Can't do any of that with a GIF. :rolleyes:

Grand Master

I am Reid

Posted
  • Author
Posted
What a stupid question, a video by definition you can pause, rewind (random access in the past), fastforward (random access forward), maybe even change the playback speed backwards and forwards. Can't do any of that with a GIF. :rolleyes:

Download quciktime, right click a .gif and select open with Quick time. Then after doing that come back to this thread and reply to my post.

Enthusiast

Bag

Posted
Posted

Personally id say an animated gif acts more like a slideshow than a video as after all its stored as a set standard gif images, which it simply moves through. Additionally you interact with gifs like you would any other image, in html you embed them using the image tags for example.

Gif's are also edited and made using image editing software as opposed to video editing software :p

So I'm going to go with image.

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