GIF vs. MP4 for my client showcase pages, one loads way faster

I spent a whole afternoon last month converting my portfolio animations from GIFs to MP4s because the GIFs made my page load crawl on mobile. The MP4 cut the file size from 48MB down to 6MB and the video quality looked sharper on my iPhone 12. Do you guys stick with GIFs for compatibility or bite the bullet with video files for speed?

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david_jones382mo ago

56ms load time means nothing if the video player stutters on a mid-range Android. I converted my site over a year ago and ended up keeping GIFs for the small thumbnails, MP4s only for the full-size hero videos. Your 6MB file is still 6MB, and on a 3G connection that's still a wait. The real fix was lazy loading everything below the fold and using WebP for the static images. The format matters way less than how you serve it.

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