On a slow or congested cellular network, a 3.3MB file might take some time to download. The full color movie that it was sourced from is only 1.4 MB. That file is now 237% larger and has fewer colors and no audio track.

Unfortunately, that is completely incorrect. You might think that the loss of resolution and color would reduce the file size. GIFs only support 256 colors, which adds a ‘grainy’ look to the video, which I believe is an important part of the Animated GIF ‘kitsch’. To turn my giphy.gif into 33 PNG files into individual images, I used ffmpeg: You can pull apart the GIF file to see the individual images. GIFs can host many frames inside one file (essentially discrete images) and then display them in quick succession. How does this work? Animated GIFs use the frame feature inside the GIF format. To support this theory, here is an animated GIF of my goat Nora, eating a fresh cedar branch: I have begun to see many mobile apps relying heavily on animated GIFs and PNGs in their content. There is no question that short video adds motion, interest, and excitement to your website or mobile app – which can help make your customers more immediately interested – and keeping them engaged is an important part of a successful site or app.

Ffmpeg gif compression