Imgur introduces gifv extension as an alternative to animated gifs

Imagehoster Imgur has developed a new gifv extension that converts animated gifs to an mp4 clip. According to Imgur, this results in considerably more compact files that are especially suitable for mobile devices.

Imgur gives an example of its gifv technology on its blog: an animated gif file of 50MB is converted to gifv format only 3.4MB. According to the imagehoster, the quality of the typical loop videos in gifv format would remain the same, while much less bandwidth is needed to receive the moving image.

The gifv extension, which essentially generates an MP4 video clip, isn’t yet an official web standard, but Imgur says it will submit its Project Gifv code to the appropriate agencies this year. Gifv images would also be displayed on Twitter and Facebook without any problems, while the format appears to be especially useful for mobile devices with limited bandwidths thanks to the significantly better compression.

Imgur will adopt the format widely on its website and will convert all animated gifs to the new format. Also, the maximum file size for animated gif uploads is increased to 50MB.