Animated BIFs

This is me thinking out loud.

The animated GIF format is over 20 years old. It is extremely inefficient. It is limited to 256 colors. You have to limit frames and dimensions to make it a reasonable file size. It’s like we are still using 8-tracks.

I want a new superior format. I want to call it an animated BIF. Photoshop is able to render your animation with h.264 compression. You could output it with hundreds of frames and thousands of colors and the file size would still be smaller than the GIF equivalent. And using HTML5 it would be a simple task to display and loop these BIFs.

I have no idea how to make this a reality.

It would require a developer to create software to convert the photoshop outputs into a BIF. They would also have to create the HTML5 mechanism for displaying these BIFs on a webpage. And it would require a major platform (like tumblr) to support the format.

Some might say, “Why not just make a video?” Those people would be idiots. GIFs serve many creative functions that video cannot allow. A video will often require you to watch 2 minutes of crap to get to the 5 seconds of awesome. GIFs allow you to isolate that moment and by looping it, you can experience the awesome again and again until you are ready to move on. With cinemagraphs you can create a seamless loop that allows you to experience the image indefinitely. Some people hand animate their artwork and a GIF is the best way to express that art. If all you need is 1-5 seconds to express your idea, a video is just not a great medium for that. Imagine if you had to play all the GIFs you see like a youtube video. That would suck. Yet the current animated GIF format is just too limiting. GIF creators often have to sacrifice quality and they shouldn’t have to.

I want animated BIFs. I want the only limitation to be a person’s imagination.

I wonder if there are any smart people out there that could help me make this happen.