[Feature Request] The ability to post mp4s in stories?

[drek]

Well, basically, the ability to post/embed mp4s?

Currently we have the ability to post gifs, but they are obviously worse quality and like a hundred times bigger in size than mp4s would be.
I think it would make sense in many ways. I myself have started to use more and more ai-generated videos in my stories, and it's an unnecessary amount of work to turn them into gifs that could be too big for people with slower connections.
Any chance this feature could be added, please?

 

[Rin Tohsaka]

If videos were allowed, then would almost even more greatly necessitate having the option to hide in-line embedded media:
https://forum.chyoa.com/threads/hide-pictures.3867/


But regardless, this does get into the can of worms that MP4 is simply a container and could mean a slew of different video formats (especially if you get into the patent minefield that is HEVC...but hey at least AVC will be patent-free soon?).

Then you get the issue of "if MP4 is allowed then we should allow WebM too!"

And that's without considering what to do about audio - a lot of images already are just hosted off-site and embedded. If this were done with video, then one could embed videos with audio and the site wouldn't have any way to differentiate a video with or without an audio track unless it also specifically used a custom player that simply has mute enabled by default (and maybe even forced-on?).


There's also the angle of simply using newer image formats - while WebP is rather "meh" as static-image lossy compression, its animated as well as lossless compression are quite good and tends to be the two aspects where it's intentionally used for fidelity reasons rather than the annoying automatic recompression into smaller file sizes that a good chunk of modern websites do nowadays.

Even newer formats like JPEG-XL and AVIF could work, but they have other issues:
- JPEG-XL has lacking browser support currently (on the cusp of improvement)
- AVIF has lacking support in actual image-creation programs that, honestly, doesn't look to be improving
- JPEG-XL's animations are rather basic with zero inter-frame compression (think like MJPEG videos)
- AVIF's lossless is somehow substantially worse than WebP (at times upwards of PNG???)

 

[TheLowKing]

A lot of the issues you identify, aren't.

Supporting plain, straightforward, externally-hosted video is easier than ever thanks to the <video> element. Support for video formats, pixel formats, resolutions, audio formats, and containers varies from browser to browser, but there's a broad minimum set that all modern browsers support. It's still not as simple as an plain static image, but if you got your file from the web, it's almost certainly going to work just fine (because video streaming websites want to reach as large an audience as possible, and so stay away from badly supported features). Unless they're in the business of storing the videos that they stream, websites cannot influence whether a video plays or doesn't play. That is a can of worms I'd do almost anything to avoid. (And not just for technical reasons.)

Setting a default volume level of 0 is trivial.

Patents are a major problem for browser, driver, OS, and hardware makers, but are a non-issue for individual websites. Webmasters are not on the hook for a royalty payment if they include an HEVC video on their sites, nor are users at risk of an FBI raid when they watch one. (But IANAL.)

_____

That's not to say that it'd necessarily be easy to add support for videos, even from a purely technical perspective. I don't know what kind of tech stack CHYOA uses. I'm a software developer, and I'll never say if anything is easy or hard without having seen the code with my own two eyes. The amount of work it'd take could be anywhere from a week to "basically impossible, unless our vendor decides to do it for us".

And there are non-technical aspects to consider as well. Which external hosts do you allow? What kind of rules and guidelines do you create for embedding videos? How do you deal with overly long or large videos? (This last one is actually an issue with GIFs already.) How about copyright? (Again, already an issue for images, but video is a bigger business, so there's more risk.) None of this is insurmountable, but it does take money, time, and effort.