maybe webApp can output gif to share?

[bbyyxx2]

When I first found out about this project I was excited, but I realized that it is not a traditional static QR code and I didn't find a sharing solution. Do I think it is possible to share via gifs?

[sz3]

The issue is file size. Compression (zstd) is built into the format, but compression can only help so much. The reason cimbar works (imo) has a lot to do with the ephemeral nature of the frames -- we create one, show it on screen, and throw it away and move onto the next -- which allows it to sidestep the issue of the size of the encoded image.

That said, the cimbar cli can output pngs, and those image files can be combined into a gif. But the gif might be larger than the initial file!

[diabolusss]

While I completely understand that the resulting GIF might be larger, I believe this solution can still be very useful. Perhaps storing images as separate PNGs could be a better approach than using a single GIF.
Imagine a sheet of paper as an alternative to CDs or DVDs.
However, it raises an interesting question: what portion of the PNGs can be lost while still allowing the file to be successfully restored?

@sz3 Thank you for your great work on this tool!

[sz3]

However, it raises an interesting question: what portion of the PNGs can be lost while still allowing the file to be successfully restored?

This will depend on how many redundant frames we generate -- for over-the-air data transfer we use a multiple of the data size(e.g. "4x") to limit the chance of encountering duplicate frames: if we're already decoded a frame, seeing it again doesn't help us. For offline usage, whether shared as a gif or on paper, too many extra frames seems like a bad idea (too much redundancy is waste), so I've tended to assume 10-20% redundancy is ok. That is, the number of frames is the bare minimum + 20% extra, so we could afford to skip/lose 20% of the encoded frames (any of them) and still decode.

[Anonymous3-a]

Another use case for GIFs is for tunnling data. For example (I know this has been done better, this is an example), uploading a cimbar GIF to a video site.