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Hi all, since we regularly see animations on AB (Solar, minor planets, satellites, ...) I would appreciate support for a file format, which allows to present those efficiently. At the moment only GIF is possible, but this is very limited (e.g. 256 colors, week compression) and hence the get usually unnecessarily very large. There are much better suited format. So I would be very happy to have such an opportunity  Many thanks for having a look on this idea. Many greetings Rüdiger |
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Addendum - just brainstorming: This feature could be also made part of the subscription levels as a value add-on. The size of the files could be in different levels depending on your subscription level. Rüdiger |
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I think this is a good idea, but what format are you suggesting? I don't know much about gif format and possible replacements, but is seems that the replacements for gif animations like APNG, WebP, AVIF, MNG, FLIF are mostly not supported by all current common browsers, so would likely not work for many on AB? MP4, MOV, WMV and FLV are other options, but again I don't think any are universal across phones/browsers/and OS, and I don't know whether any of them would solve all the problems? It would be terrible to have AB folks go to an animation and see nothing because of a compatability issue. I would put in a support request to Salvatore and see if he has a good idea on what would be generally supportable by the community, or could get some advice on the topic, unless you can suggest a particular format if you know of something that would work well for us all? Be great to see a better option, I'm behind you on that. Rick |
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Rick Veregin: Hi Rick, you are right. But I would actually tend towards the MP4 container since it can contain formats with very good compression (e.g. H.265), high quality and is free of licenses as single users - and is widely supported natively and very flexible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Browser_support CS Rüdiger |
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Hey guys, I'm looking into this. I've been putting this one off for too long, and I know many of you want it. There's a 50/50 chance that I can do it relatively quickly (2-6 weeks). If we're unlucky, it requires major work and I might put it off again in favor of another AstroBin project that I've been waiting to get my hands on for a long time. But if I think I can do it in 2-6 weeks or less, then this might be the right time! |
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Salvatore Iovene: That's really great to hear! Thanks! CS Rüdiger |
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Ruediger:Salvatore Iovene: That goes for me too Salvatore, thanks! Rick |
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Alright, I did some hacking before going on vacation for a week. The news are good: it's not as bad as I feared. I'm pretty confident I can squeeze video support in without massive architectural changes or lots of ugly code. In fact, with about a day of messing around I have a basic prototype in which:
Now, there will be lots of things to do, like:
Most of the things above sound relatively easy, and the only one that worries me is the first, but it should be doable too. My biggest concerns are:
With all this in mind, I think I might have a beta of this available around September, unless I bump into some major hurdles, or some other urgent task needs my attention. Fingers crossed! |
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Hi Salvatore, many thanks for keeping us updated. This really sounds promising. I share your concerns about transcoding. Also when the uploaded file is already H. 264 a re-encoding should be prevented. To avoid this, is it possible to check the codec during upload? Just reject everything not being already H. 264? This would avoid the need of transcoding and accidental re-encoding. Anyway, I wish you a nice vacation and recreation time with you family 😀👍. Rüdiger |
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Hi Rüdiger, encoding can be checked for sure. If not before the upload starts, at least either when the file is partially uploaded or fully uploaded. However, I'd hate to have people need to re-encode it just for AstroBin. What I could do, and it's probably a better solution, is:
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Hi Salvatore, also a very smart approach. It is even more flexible. I was only worried, about this transcoding. I tried this multiple times and made the experience, if you not chose the appropriate codec parameters you just generate pixel mud (and frustration 😜). But I am optimistic. Let’s start with some approach and gather experience. Refining can be done step by step. No need to be perfect on the first shot. 😀 Cheers Rüdiger |
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This project is progressing well, I think most of the problems are dealt with. I still need to optimize the workflow to account for the fact that video processing is slower (generating thumbnails, encoding) and go thru a million places that make assumptions that there is an image file instead of a video file... But it's looking promising and we might have this in beta in a month or two!     |
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AstroBin uses the word "image" everywhere in lots of sentences all over the site. I find that changing everything to "image or video" is ugly, and will be a lot of work for translators because suddenly all these strings will not be translated and will show up as English also if you use AstroBin in a different language. Changing things to be dynamic so that AstroBin says "video" instead of "image" when it's a video is a lot of work both for me and for the translators, and I will still need "images of videos" in places where both could show. Does anybody care if I don't change anything, and AstroBin still says "image" even if it's a video? |
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Salvatore Iovene: Hi Salvatore, for me this absolutely OK. If later it turns out, a modification is required, there is still time for it. Alternative "content" could be a neutral term. CS Rüdiger |
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I think image is fine, I would not change that if it is a lot of work--and if you add different options where do you stop (image, animation, video, composite, mosaic...). We always have the title for us to be specific, for example, I try to add animation, or animation and image, to the title so everyone knows what to expect. Thanks Salvatore! Rick |
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Alright thanks guys. I will leave image for now (also as the vast majority of content will be images anyway). In the future I might change to "post" or something. The good news is I'm kinda finished... as in everything appears to work! Now the hard part comes: I need to replicate the entire deployment environment to do some proper testing (I'm worried about worker size and memory constraints, but not too much, as I used memory constraints on my local development environment). It looks like a late august release might be possible |
