More data storage-efficient image formats

[orchetect]

One issue I'm observing is that generated thumbnails (still or animated) can occupy quite a lot of disk space, especially if markers number in the dozens or hundreds. This can represent hundreds of MB or possibly more than a 1 GB. There are some existing options in MarkersExtractor to reduce frame size and quality, but not a ton of options.

Currently we support two still image types (png, jpg) and one animated image type (gif).

• PNG and GIF are very inefficient in terns of data storage and offer little or no parameters to reduce quality or compress in order to save disk space.
• JPG does have a quality parameter and is very versatile, which is good.

It might be worth adding WebP/WebM and HEIC as export options, which are more modern and have more options for compression. Both support stills and animated sequences. The question is: how compatible are they with the profile platforms we're targeting? (Notion, Airtable, etc.) That would dictate how much utility we'd get out of adding these formats.

[IAmVigneswaran]

Notion supports - PNG, GIF, JPG, WebP, HEIC.
Notion does support WebM, but in Gallery View, you would not able to preview the media. Hence, It kind of defeats the purpose.

Airtable supports - PNG, GIF, JPG. I will investigate further on Airtable's supported image file types.

Yes, having the option of WebP and HEIC would be great.

[IAmVigneswaran]

Found this library for WebP.
https://github.com/SDWebImage/SDWebImageWebPCoder

Hopefully in future build, we can add Animated WebP support.

Notion supports Animated WebP.

[IAmVigneswaran]

Found another library for WebP

https://github.com/TimOliver/WebPKit