What is a .GIFV file?
GIFV was Imgur’s trick of serving silent video in place of heavy animated GIFs.
- Did you know
- GIFV looked like a GIF but was really compact video, saving huge amounts of bandwidth.
- Imgur introduced GIFV in October 2014, automatically transcoding uploaded animated GIFs to H.264 MP4 or WebM to slash their file size.
- Despite the name, a GIFV link serves a looping silent HTML5 video tag, not the decades-old GIF bitmap format it imitates.
- What Analyser reads
- Inspect streaming manifests and video containers: HLS/DASH/Smooth Streaming/HDS manifests and playlists; pro/broadcast MXF/GXF/LXF/DV; ASF/.dvr-ms and RealMedia; DivX/F4V/Insta360/GoPro proxies/GIFV; raw elementary streams (IVF, Y4M, MPEG-1/2, H.264/H.265 SPS, AV1 OBU); MPEG program/transport and PVR/DVB recordings; Windows Recorded TV, Ogg Media, NUT; DPX/Cineon/Dahua/.yuv identified.
- Depth of analysis
- .GIFV is an identification-grade format: Analyser recognises it from its bytes and decodes the header metadata it carries, rather than opening it in a full viewer. Formats that do get a full viewer are marked "Full" on the formats page.
- Open a .GIFV file
- Drag a .GIFV file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It is identified entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.