Why Would You Turn a Perfectly Good Gameplay Video Into a GIF?
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Capabilities are endless. We sit in that awesome chair in front of a big screen, maybe pop on a pair of state-of-the-art headphones, with the blazing intention to record our heroic quests and let others know just how almighty Gary-the-conqueror can be. So, there’s 4K game capture, modern video codecs, terabytes of storage and consoles capable of recording E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. And yet GIFs, a format that graced our screens in 1987, are still necessary and useful.
Technically, this makes very little sense. GIF is limited to a palette of 256 colours per frame, carries no audio and can dish out files far larger than modern video formats carrying the same footage.
Google likes to make things obvious, so they illustrated this by comparing a 3.7 MB animated GIF with the same animation encoded as a 551 KB MP4 and 341 KB WebM. When a still image is not enough and you need an animation, video is normally the more efficient choice, as Google explains in its guide on replacing animated GIFs with video.
Convertio’s mp4 to gif converter turns a short MP4 clip into a looping GIF that can isolate a gameplay moment for a guide, bug report, comparison or community discussion without requiring viewers to scrub repeatedly through the original recording.
So why would a gamer deliberately take an MP4 and turn it into a technological stegosaurus? You know… large and silent… Let’s start digging.
A clip and a loop do different jobs
We produce game capture through video. Sure. On Windows, for example, Xbox Game Bar records captured gameplay into the Captures folder as an MP4 file. That’s also sensible. MP4 can hold longer sequences, sound, and much better visual information, leaving GIF in the rear-view mirror. Somewhere in 1987.
But suppose the 40-second recording has this one funny/kick*ss/confusing/awesome moment. Or an enemy disappearing when the camera crosses a particular angle, an animation behaving strangely, a perfectly timed parry or a character being launched several hundred metres because the physics engine briefly developed religious convictions.
Sometimes the move is so iconic that you might not need people to watch the whole video. Just the moment will do. You need them to see that one movement, and see it over and over again.
I know, I know, MP4 is the better format for the full capture. But then the GIF is the little ‘wink and the smile’, in other words, the flavour-filled fragment.
Some examples, shall we? A detailed Left 4 Dead 2 investigation into melee mechanics was updated with an animated GIF showing the game’s hit rays being generated during a swing. The author explained that the animation was added because it made the mechanic clearer to readers. Later technical guides went further, using visualisations of hit rays across consecutive server ticks to explain how melee swings actually travel through space.
Loops save the day.
Bugs are GIF kings
Bug reports. That’s the GIF royal palace. You might ask why, but take a small second here, you’ll get it. Game problems can take fractions of a second to notice. And to really see it you sometimes need a loop.
The same goes for gaming journalism, as well. In September 2015, a GIF posted to the Dota 2 subreddit showed a major bug that allowed Dire-side Ancient creeps to flood the map without players touching them. PC Gamer linked to the GIF in its report on the issue, which was serious enough for joinDota League matches to be paused. Valve fixed the bug with a patch later that same day.
Evidence is a short looping image. Here is the claim, here is the weird thing happening, carry on. Gold for guides, patch discussions, and bug reports.
Game developers have used the same trick
Let’s continue with the examples, and the best of them comes from ‘No Man’s Sky.’
During development, Hello Games faced a ridiculous testing problem. Its planets were procedurally generated, so developers couldn’t walk through every environment and check whether the system was producing sensible results.
Their solution? Servers and bots that travelled around generated planets, taking screenshots and animated GIFs. The resulting material appeared on an internal website where the team could zoom out and inspect grids containing enormous numbers of planets. If one area contained suspicious amounts of blue, too many rocks, or something visibly wrong, developers could investigate the generation rules.
That’s GIF being used for exactly what it does well: lots of short automatic loops could be scanned quickly.
SpeedRunners went even further and built GIF creation into the game. Now, that’s commitment. Its replay player had a GIF exporter allowing players to create short clips of favourite moments and crop the animation around the important part of the scene. That’s why gamers still have a use for the format.
GIFs are no panacea
GIF is not a superior video technology, let’s not get carried away. Desire to display a boss battle? Keep the MP4. Dialogue is important? MP4. Beautiful scenery, detailed lighting or rad colour differences? Definitely MP4.
Longer animations also tarnish the whole concept. GIF files are very large, while video compression is intended to work well with moving images. A web developer can even get MP4 or WebM to act like a GIF if they want an automatically looping animation, with autoplay, loop, muted and inline playback and still maintain the efficiency of a video.
The format remains because at times you’ve recorded thirty seconds, but just three are worthy of note. At times, you are detailing an animation, not telling a story. The joke gets better if the unfortunate NPC falls down the same staircase indefinitely.
Save as MP4. This is the logical file.
But when the point of the clip is one tiny movement that deserves to repeat until everyone understands it (or until it stops being funny), Convertio will turn those awesome few seconds into a GIF.
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