I don’t know what a .webp file is but I don’t like it. They’re like a filthy prank version of the image/gif you’re looking for. They make you jump through all these hoops to find the original versions of the files that you can actually do anything with.
mp4? Imgur doesn’t even bother hosting gifs—it automatically converts any you upload to mp4 because gifs are incredibly storage-inefficient.
mp4 is a video format, the key differences with animated images being autoplay, looping and maybe transparency.
The point is the browser just plays the mp4 with autoplay and looping and then people call them GIFs when they aren’t. The only time you are looking at an actual GIF file is when the quality is atrocious and the colors are messed up because it needed to be dithered.
Yes, but if you tried to share that mp4 on other platforms it would be treated as a video, and that’s why gifs are still relevant.
funny enough, not true. try saving a video as mp4 but not too long and without sound (!) and it will be treated exactly like gifs on those platforms.
I tried it on these platforms:
sometimes afaik you could still have success renaming the file to .gif or .gifv I think? Telegram and Whatsapp should also work afaik.