The APNG format

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webfork
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Re: The APNG format

#31 Post by webfork »

SYSTEM wrote:Good news: Google plans to support APNG starting from Chrome 59. :) The launch bug report is marked as "Launch-M-Target: 59-Stable".
Ah that's really great news, thanks. Finally Animated GIFs can begin to get phased out.

For reference, I just checked Vivaldi to see if maybe they jumped ahead of the pack on that one. No luck.

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__philippe
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Re: The APNG format

#32 Post by __philippe »

More online/offline APNG software resources :

Especially appreciate a couple of small, dual-interface (GUI/CLI) tools :

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Re: The APNG format

#33 Post by __philippe »

webfork wrote:
SYSTEM wrote:Good news: Google plans to support APNG starting from Chrome 59. :) The launch bug report is marked as "Launch-M-Target: 59-Stable".
  Ah that's really great news, thanks. Finally Animated GIFs can begin to get phased out...
Meantime, while Waiting for   ̶G̶o̶d̶o̶d̶ ̶ ̶ Google's native APNG support... Image
... the Chrome APNG add-on (first discussed here) is still very much alive and kicking, ...(ta @webfork... 8) )

Install it for free straight from the GoogleChrome webstore,

... so you can swirl, twirl and whirl this cute merry-go-round apng till your head gets dizzy...;-)

Image


PS
Works fine under Win7, not so well under XP... :?
Last edited by __philippe on Wed May 16, 2018 6:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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webfork
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Re: The APNG format

#34 Post by webfork »

In light of the upcoming embrace of the format by Chrome, a few quick APNG tests inspired by TP109's work:

I grabbed a bunch of PNG files and compiled them into an animated PNG using a two different methods:
  • Convert with APNG Anime Maker with the settings: Compression:8, Optimizations: Lossy, 2 (the default of lossy: 10 was too noticeable). Result: 192k

    View result here: https://imgur.com/gallery/N4MzwAd
  • Assemble with PhotoScape to a GIF file (166k) and then convert using PNGOptimizer. Result: 105k Because the GIF format is limited to 256 colors, there's a noticeable quality difference.

    View result here: https://imgur.com/gallery/eeSoS
Needless to say, the smaller of the two has been uploaded to the official entry.

billon
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Re: The APNG format

#35 Post by billon »

I make APNGs for TPFC with APNG Assembler

There are also other APNG tools from the same developer:
apng2gif
APNG Disassembler
APNG Optimizer
gif2apng

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Re: The APNG format

#36 Post by webfork »

Some news here: APNG Assembler put out a new version out including 64-bit version: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia ... bler.shtml

On a related note, looking at the table on Wikipedia, it seems like the whole standard suddenly became viable almost overnight. That Microsoft still doesn't support APNG doesn't phase me much, they've been playing a very slow catch-up for years now.

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Re: The APNG format

#37 Post by webfork »

Feature requests for more APNG tools in popular programs here on the site:

ShareX
https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/issues/2595

ScreenToGif
https://github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif/issues/129

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Re: The APNG format

#38 Post by webfork »

webfork wrote:Feature requests for more APNG tools in popular programs here on the site:

ScreenToGif https://github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif/issues/129
As billon noted in the most recent update, the APNG format has been adopted by ScreenToGif. Great news.

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Re: The APNG format

#39 Post by webfork »

Someone over on Imgur put together a good visual analysis of some APNG advantages: https://imgur.com/gallery/74ptX

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Midas
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Re: The APNG format

#40 Post by Midas »

Good. The breakdown regarding browser compatibility (my emphasis)...
Compatibility:
* When Chrome 59 comes out of beta, it will be supported on every major browser except for Microsoft Edge/IE. If the images above are not moving for you, your browser doesn't support APNG.
* Firefox has supported APNG since 2008.
* Opera supported it until it switched to use chrome's engine (Blink) 'under the hood' a few years back. The addition of APNG to Blink means that Opera will support APNG again in the future.
* Safari has supported APNG since around 2014. This means that all other browsers on iOS will also support it, since Apple requires them to use Safari's engine (webkit). Until APNG comes native in chrome 59, you can download this extension to enable it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... mnpckdbblp
Meanwhile, Microsoft lags behind eating paste.

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Re: The APNG format

#41 Post by webfork »

As __philippe pointed out in entry comments, ShareX now supports APNG screen recording. There are now a good selection of APNG creation tools here on the site. It's been very rewarding to see this format maturing over time.

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Re: The APNG format

#42 Post by webfork »

In a recent test with FileOptmizer, I noticed that the included APNG compression tools are very strong. The initial animated GIF for our PhotoDemon entry was 929k. The initial conversion using PNG Optimizer was already very promising, cutting down the overall size of the slideshow-style animation down to 680k or 73%. FileOptimizer further reduced it to 181k or about 19% of the original size with no loss in quality. Those are some excellent compression improvements.

Note that a "lossy" optimization option is present in the menu, but selecting that did not change overall file size for the APNG file I tested.

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