Hi everyone, I've made number of upgrades to the service based on the feedback I've received. Improved overall GIF quality by using high-def input stream, added powerful cropping functionality as well improvements to the overall usability.
Looking for more suggestions on improving this service.
I use both YouTube-DL and FFMPEG to accomplish this task. I will say this, creating high quality GIF is by far the easiest part of the whole thing. Bypassing too many request as well as throttling which youtube is very good at was the trickiest part and still is. Making something work for a single user is one thing, scaling so everyone else can use it is a whole different beast. The name of the game is proxy and everything revolves around that.
This is a GIF maker, so it creates GIFs from videos and nothing more. Due to the fact that GIFs are over 30 years old, it should not be compared to today's technology, specially video encoding which is very different from a soundless looping image. Having said that, I'm all for something new that will replace a GIF with more modern approach and millions of colors.
Also to add to your point, file storage is becoming ambiguous with cloud option and also very cheap and abundant on most devices these days, internet speed is fast enough that large file size is not that big of an issue, so the benefits outweigh its limitations. GIFs are still best way to quickly share something that is expressive and purely visual. There are other technologies to support looping visual, but nothing that has been universally supported as GIF has. I'll be happy to offer other formats once they become available in the future.
I do use both YouTube-DL and FFMPEG, and producing high-res GIF is actually very easy. It took me two weeks (part time) to launch the first raw version that worked well on my machine :) but took over a year to be able to scale it so everyone else can use it as well.
Also I like to add, I've build number of applications using an API only to regret the time I spent on it later. When you rely on external API, its really not your product and you don't own it, API owns you and every move you make. Instead, I would rather rely on a strong community for support such as YouTube-DL, even though there are issues and its not perfect, still much better than API route, just my two cents.
You made all the right points about GIF, it is an outdated technology for sure, but nothing has truly replaced it yet, there is apng as well as other technologies, but that's not universally supported as GIFs are.
GIFs should not be compared to videos, for one GIF is 30 year old technology with obvious limitations, however, there is still demand due to its portability. It also creates better effect if its very short clip, which most GIFs are. I appreciate you checking it out.
There are number of things that court would consider if its fair use, GIFs generally fall into that category, there haven't been a case brought to courts yet, but doesn't mean there won't be.
Your point is well taken, however I'm not sure comparing 30 year old technology to today's video format is a fair comparison. The only reason why gifs still exist today despite their limitations is that they can be displayed on all screens being an image format. As you know dealing with video is much more complicated and while modern browsers have no issues with displaying it, many
applications do not support it. There are number of issue with using APNG across various mediums also so the good ole gif stays for now. I'm thinking of adding ability to just cut video into any length and can make it looping as well, but for now there seems to be demand for making pure gifs. its a work in progress so number of things will be added.
I appreciate your reply!
Missed your question. Working with Marvel API was not bad. They have really good interface for testing endpoints so they make it easy to create and test objects. Accessing large sets of data where you have hundreds of issues would timeout sometimes, so you just have to rerun it number of times. Its a new API but so far they have done pretty good job. Overall I liked working with Marvel API.
Back button fixed on web only, mobile unfortunately has to be this way at least for now. Its technically single page app, so I'm just manipulating hash URL value, that is why back button is not trivial. Good point on the image, I will add it to my todo list.
I have reciprocal links going back to marvel.com, there are no ads and I did receive a feedback from an individual on Marvel dev team that he liked the app. So I'm assuming they are cool with it.