Animated .GIF: Video or Image?


.GIF  

103 members have voted

  1. 1. Animated .GIF?

    • Video
      10
    • Image
      93


Recommended Posts

  • 4 weeks later...

Gif = series of images played consecutively which is treated as an image.

Video = series of images treated as a video.

So quite almost one and the same. Gif might even be likened to a hybrid of a single image and a video.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A format that can display video is a video format.

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

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

I don't have any problems opening an animated .gif in Windows Media Player v.11.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.