MP4 to Animated AVIF Conversion

This repository provides a tutorial and script for converting .mp4 videos to .avif animations. It's a GitHub representation of the blog post available at: Converting an MP4 to an Animated AVIF.

Why AVIF over GIF?

• Better quality
• Smaller file sizes
• Faster page loads

Prerequisites

Ensure you have ffmpeg and libavif installed. For MacOS users, you can use brew:

brew install ffmpeg libavif

Usage

1. Navigate to the directory where your .mp4 file is saved.
2. Use the provided script to convert your mp4 file to avif:

./script/mp4_to_avif.sh path_to_your_file.mp4

For example:

./script/mp4_to_avif.sh /Users/videos/input.mp4

Note: Ensure that both ffmpeg and libavif are installed and available in your PATH for the script to work properly.

Viewing AVIF files on MacOS

As of writing this, MacOS doesn't natively support viewing animated AVIF files. If you try opening the file using MacOS' native Preview app, you'll see a static frame. To properly view the animated AVIF file, consider using third-party solutions like the IINA media player, or viewing in a supported browser.

Bash Script

For convenience, a bash script mp4_to_avif.sh is provided within this repository to automate the conversion process. Ensure you've made the script executable with chmod +x mp4_to_avif.sh before using.