Microsoft releases wonderfully loopy experimental GIF-jiggler

Microsoft Research has released something rather interesting: a GIF-maker that analyses the patterns in a video and re-orders discrete sections of the frames to produce the best possible output. Redmond has been showing off the software's capabilities for a few months now, with this paper and the video below describing its …

[Anonymous Coward]

Enhance 34.56

Isn't this using the old method to enhance single frames from a video source?

[Khaptain]

Points

1 : I hope this doesn't mean the return of animated Gifs.....

2 : <quote>The headline alliterates if you pronounce GIF as its makers intended: with a soft J for jelly sound, not a hard G for golf

Were French people involved in the decision to make it into the soft J rather than the hard G.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Points

Isn't 'Jif' a floor cleaner?

Coat with a packet of Flash in the pocket

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Points

As I understand it, they changed Jif (cream cleaner) to Cif because the people at Jif lemon objected to them producing a product for the kitchen also called Jif Lemon. There was a big court case, the makers of the nasty pasteurised lemon juice won and the makes of the cream cleaner pretended that the name change was so that other people in the EU could pronounce the name of their product.

[Khaptain]

Re: Points

Lol, I hated those damned Lemons, my brother does too, I used to squirt him with them... ( stings the eyes)

[Gerhard Mack]

Re: Points

Return? Check out "vines" animated Gifs have been back in style for awhile now with the younger generation.

[Khaptain]

Re: Points

I just learned what a "vine" is ... ( No, I do not belong to the Twiterrati)...

Some of those animated gifs are actually quite well done ( just dont make them appear on my webpages).....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just one question..

To get animated GIFs down to a size that is still palatable online is quite a bit of work already. Unless this optimisation is done on the client end I can see all those separate loos result in a massive file. How do file sizes compare?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just one question..

According to the video, the resulting files are smaller.

[Doogs]

They've been using this to create short video loops on the Bing home page.

Yes, I'm one of the few people who use Bing (well, every now and then anyway, for specific purposes).

[Getriebe]

"They've been using this to create short video loops on the Bing home page."

Nope

HTML5

[Bronek Kozicki]

HTML5 ?

You mean, there is equivalent animation processing technology in HTML5 standard?

Wow, I'm impressed. Wonder what next will W3C standardize - voice control perhaps?

[HMB]

Re: HTML5 ?

"You mean, there is equivalent animation processing technology in HTML5 standard?

Wow, I'm impressed. Wonder what next will W3C standardize - voice control perhaps?"

There doesn't have to be, you can do your own implementation with canvas and javascript.

[Getriebe]

Re: HTML5 ?

You mean, there is equivalent animation processing technology in HTML5 standard?

OK, I am a manager

[Dave 62]

My first thought was that it was what was being used on bing too.

Not sure the format matters if it's the same technique to generate the frames, this is a matter of image processing.

I believe the one with deer had a ghost deer on it, so clearly the technique can produce artefacts.

Or.. you know... ghost deer.

Still a hard G.

Also pretty sure GIFs never went away thanks to certain imageboards and that sort of website and whether or not *real* vines are gifs, vines aren't necessarily gifs (unless gifs have audio??).

It's not like all selfies have to be jpgs..

[Andy The Hat]

Let's try again. It was "G" for "Graphics" not "J" for "jellybrain" ... grrr grrr grrr ... not </australian accent> Geoff Geoff Geoff

Just because the USA decided, many years after the entire world (*including* AFAIR the USA) had embraced and used the word "GIF", that the inventor(s) liked the pronunciation "JIF" doesn't mean that it should be or is ...

Just to put both my feet in up to the ankles - sulPHur, sulPHur!

It's all to do with US world domination and finding English hard ... but it's so much easier if you remove bits. Get rid "g" because it's hard to pronounce (except in "gee that's hard") and "ph" because it's difficult ro write ... "Z" (zed) has already been lost to incompetence. Mark my words, "W" will be next, replaced by a "V2 ... sorry typo ... "V" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell? I know I've said that there isn't anything that Reg readers won't find a way of blaming on the United States, but this is getting a bit absurd, don't you think?

[Pascal Monett]

Re: this is getting a bit absurd, don't you think?

I have only one response : George Dubya Bush.

Ever since that, the US of A have forfeited any right to not be responsible for everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: this is getting a bit absurd, don't you think?

That's a bit rich if you're from the country that repeatedly chose Blair to complement him. :P

[Anonymous Coward]

For those wanting to try this...

It's for Win7 64-bit and above (with at least 8GB RAM supposedly required), plus you need the VS 2012 Update 4 runtimes if you don't already have them:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679

And it's nothing to do with GIFs specifically, it's MPEG4 in and out from what I can see.

[Shonko Kid]

Giraffics Interchange Format???

Either way, that's pretty cool

[Haku]

JIF?

Isn't that lemon juice in a bottle shaped like a lemon?

[PunkTiger]

Re: JIF?

No, silly, it's peanut butter.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when people get in a TIFF over filename pronunciation.

[Jolyon Smith]

Tomato Tomato

I don't much care if the originator of the acronym pronounced it wrong. It sounds dumb the way he says it.

[Captain DaFt]

Re: Tomato Tomato

Yeah, I'd love to hear the conversation after he updates his computer:

"What? Did you say you put a new Jurassic card in your box? WTF??"

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Tomato Tomato

...so good they named it twice?