Comment on The demise of Flash didn't bring any big HTML5/JS equivalent for watching animations; fast internet and better video compression made those types of animations become raster videos as well
insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago[deleted]
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A vector video format does exist: animated SVG. It has all the features you claim are missing.
But nobody uses it because it is much more complicated to do than rasterized video and has no relevant advantages.
insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
A video has sound, can be exported from the animation software to a single file, and it can be played in a standard video player.
Animated SVG does not sound like it does that, and needing new paid* software isn’t great for adoption either. And honestly, I’ve never even heard of animated SVG (I’m well aware of SVG and that it probably could be animated with CSS or JS but that alone does not make it a thing).
The fact that vector works at resolutions (even if they don’t exist yet!) without the author even needing to think about it (let alone re-export) is an advantage. It can be great for many 2D aesthetics (many cartoons even used it!), the biggest complication is Adobe (and whoever is selling a subscription to what you mentioned).
Also that people are still developing things with Flash (even if it has to be ran via Ruffle) tells me again that the issue isn’t vector, it’s that replacing a format with ingredients is not an effective strategy if you actually want people to use it.
* yeah I know Flash wasn’t so great in that department, but communities were already using it
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s why I was talking about meaningful advantages. Today, stuff gets exported in 4k and that’s it. No need for anything more.
That nobody uses animated SVG should give you a clue about how many people value vector graphics over rasterization. It has uses (mostly when you expect stuff to get zoomed a lot) but only in quite specific use cases.
There’s ton of free software that exports to HTML5, including most major game engines. And people use that a lot. In fact, you can make VR games that fully run in a browser.
Browser games still exist. They run on HTML5 now, not on Flash. Web video still exists. It runs on HTML5 players, not on Flash. Little animations in websites still exist. They run on HTML5/SVG/CSS, not on Flash. Flash really was just replaced by HTML5, because it’s plain better on every front.
insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
I don’t think it’s as ubiquitous as you think. 1080p is pretty much standard (aside from old videos), 4K is still high-end and most uploading to that on YT are probably more tech-leaning channels who actually do use it. I even see new stuff from TV corps that’s still only 1080p.
4K if you’re using a full-raster workflow is taxing at every step. Display, CPU/GPU (for software stability, filters/effects), RAM and storage, internet upload speed, also camera (and fast storage there too) where relevant. Also backups, and maybe even higher-res workflow to allow room to crop/re-frame if needed.
I imagine it must be a disappointment to actually buy a 4K monitor for content viewing, stuck watching 1080p on new videos because the creators can’t afford that workflow or just don’t care. Even stuff that is 4K might have issues with encoding quality due to cost-cutting (or requires higher subscription cost).
8K is a thing too (but even more impractical), so the problem is repeated there too.
So yeah, I would say it is a meaningful difference that vector doesn’t have this problem.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Spoken like someone who has never animated something in flash.
Go ahead and try to make an animated music video in SVG. Tell me how easy it was. It’s it something a middle schooler could pick up easily after a couple hours?
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ok, tell me: How many people make animated music videos and publish them on Youtube, versus how many people make animated music videos and publish them as Flash videos in 2025?
How many people did that in 2015 in Youtube vs Flash videos?
Nobody cares about Flash because it sucks. Even back in 2012 Flash sucked. It was a really bad tech and by 2015 it was mostly used by people to dumb to learn real programming languages and frameworks.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Where do you expect me to get actual numbers from?
But as a proportion of content creators, back in the early 10s a huge proportion of content creators were submitting content to places like newgrounds. And itch.io equivalents all used flash.
And around 2015, the total number dropped, but didn’t have a corresponding increase in non-flash equivalents.
Why? Because what few tools existed to do so had a much much much higher bar for entry. So the content simply never got created.
Flash sucked as a content consumer because the plugins had mediocre support and were full of vulnerabilities.
But as a creator, it was great.
Eww. that’s elitist as fuck.
These people aren’t software devs. They shouldn’t need to learn to code in order to animate a video.
For absolute shame. Wow.