It’s Time to Stopping Using Tech from the 80s

Crazy as it sounds, most people still use technology created in 1987 to “show-off” their cinemagraphs on the web. You heard it here. The infamous GIF file format dates back to the dark ages – long before the birth of the Internet. Why the heck is it still around?

We all love seeing GIFs used for memes and looping cat videos. Heck, one silicon valley startup even raised an ungodly sum of money as a platform for sharing animated GIFs. Unfortunately, the GIF file format was created for tiny little images made up from a handful of colors.

But for beautiful cinemagraphs? Come on, give your head a shake. It’s time to grow-up and leave the animated GIF to your nephew that loves making looping Brady Bunch or Homer Simpson animations. Now that major social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter support HD cinemagraphs, it really is time to focus on high resolution images.

Click the image to see it full screen. (Trying doing this with a GIF)

The cinemagraphs images created in Cinemagraph Pro are often based on HD or 4K resolution video. Converting an HD resolution cinemagraph to a GIF is the worst thing you could do. Stop it right now. Your beautiful cinemagraph will become a bloated bandwidth hog that will bog-down most web pages and won’t look nearly as good as the original source video.

All Flixel cinemagraphs include an embed-code. This is similar to embedding a YouTube video on a web page. The embed code ensures that the cinemagraph will play at HD resolution with millions of colors. It’ll look fantastic.

And, your cinemagraph will look awesome in any browser and on any device while keeping the file size very small.

Don’t believe us? Wizards, you say? Possibly. How about you take a look at the stats first before jumping to such presumptuous conclusions.

Seriously, you still need convincing? Alright, take a look at the cinemagraphs below for some visual validation. Check it out on your computer for the full effect.

Flixel Embed

GIF Embed

This is the hard truth, people. It’s pretty amazing that the GIF format has lasted this long! At the most basic level, the definition of GIF is: a lossless format for image files that supports both animated and static images. Overtime the word GIF has become wrongly interchangeable with short repeating videos. Lets be real; looping videos are awesome. Looping videos will most likely always be awesome, but now we have a solution to maintain HD quality AND lower the file size. Why not get the best for less?