[rbx]

Many times if GIF is converted to video it will ruin the pixel art, or in some cases even produce bigger file [1]. I get the efficiency argument for conversion to video, but in some cases it is a no-go. There should always be an option to not convert to video.

[1] https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/6403

[azinman2]

This article is less about GIFs being animated memes today and more about being the standard (at one time) way to send images between computers.

[catalogia]

> "in some cases even produce bigger file [1]."

The dancing star gif posted in that github issue is 5,464 bytes in the original form and only 4,015 bytes when converted to a VP9 webm (with alpha channel) using ffmpeg's default settings.

> "There should always be an option to not convert to video."

I disagree. The conversion should be automatic. The converted result should then be compared against the original, and whichever is smaller should be sent to users. There may well be gifs that are smaller than their conversions, but I don't trust users to know which those are. Let the computer compare the two and make an objective decision.