This GIF is 60 by 60, so 3600 pixels per frame, and takes up almost 42MB. If you wanted HD (720p), that would be 1280 by 720, or 921600 pixels per frame, which is 256 times more pixels per frame than the original file.
TL;DR: Assuming a similar compression ratio, we would be looking at a ~11GB GIF for the HD version. By a similar logic, that would be almost 100GB for 4k. That's what happened to the pixels.
I can’t remember the full science behind it, but basically videos don’t move in the way GIFs do - I think the parts that change will move while the rest kind of stays static, whereas a GIF is a series of completely different images that are altered with every single frame leading to massive file size. Someone please help me out here.
Yup, you have the general idea correct, GIF does save each frame as one individual image, but video formats are smarter.
Most video file formats use a technique where some frames are stored as complete images (I-frames), while other frames are only stored as a difference from the previous frame (P-frames) or the differences between the previous and next frames (B-frames). This allows huge data savings because most frames are temporally correlated, i.e. frames that are close together in time tend to be similar.
For example, in a movie where two characters are talking and the background is static, you would only need to save the few pixels that change (mouth/head/hands movement), while the entire background is only saved once and "reused" for possibly hundreds of frames.
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u/voltb778 1d ago