i know you hate it, but look, it's an amazing format, and you should always use it!
im also talking about other formats here :3
why? my apps dont support it,,
well, support is slowly increasing as time goes on. photoshop now supports it, discord supports it, programs that currently dont might support it later. all browsers have supported it for years, and windows 11 now previews it in the file explorer!
webp is generally more efficient than png, being 50% smaller on average. it supports animations, both lossy and lossless compression and alpha channel/transparency. it's like jpeg, gif and png in one. you can convert a png or a gif into a webp, lose zero quality, and still save ~30% filesize. or export a webp at 70% quality like you would with jpeg, but with less artifacts and smaller size!
gif only supports up to 256 colors, and is very inefficient. the filesize is HUGE, and it takes several seconds for an imageviewer to „compile“ or decode before replaying normally (thats the initial lag you see).
webp supports 16,7 million colors, is much smaller and doesnt take seconds to play properly. this is especially important for art.
also, social media and discord dont actually send „real“ gifs; theyre secretely videos on loop!
heres a comparison between filesizes:
| Image | PNG/GIF | WebP |
|---|---|---|
 | 94kb | 40kb |
 | 572kb | 293kb |
 | 2mb | 900kb |
these savings are especially important if you run a site. they greatly reduce bandwidth and makes images load faster, and saves data for users on a restricted dataplan
there's also avif and jpeg-xl (jxl), though they both have signficant tradeoffs;
- avif is even smaller than webp, but isnt supported by many apps/sites, and takes longer to encode than webp. sometimes is bigger than webp on simple graphics/drawings
- jxl is supported by literally nothing. though it has hdr, 10bit color, animations, alpha, all of it in one format!
there's also this weird issue where converting a jpeg to webp or avif doubles the size.
in summary, lossless webp is better than png, lossy is better than jpeg. only use png, gif and jpeg for compatibility.
Opus
yeah, opus isnt supported by pretty much all DAWs, so i understand why you'd still use mp3.
though, i think you should export your epic beats into flac and then convert to opus at about 128kbps, or even 64.
why 128kbps or 64? well, opus preserves much more data at lower bitrates. a song in mp3 64kbps sounds like something recorded on a toy microphone, but in opus, sounds super clear at the same bitrate. 64kbps is fine, although 128 is generally best quality.
here's an example. this mp3 is 4,20mb at 128kbps!
song is by nobonoko, please check him out!
if you cant play them, refresh the page. my site is still a bit buggy ;p
and the same song (mp3) at 64kbps! this one is 2,1mb.
sounds dogshit. now, in opus(ogg container) at 64kbps! this one is also 2,1mb
there's basically no difference between opus at 64kbps and mp3 at 128kbps, yet opus is half the size!
if you have a big library of songs and are running out of disk space, maybe convert them all to opus before buying a new drive or deleting this song you dont listen to anymore.
basically, use opus at 128kbps instead of mp3 at 328kbps