Horrible ffmpeg GIF palette WAD for some reason

[Linguica]

There is a program called ffmpeg that can convert video files from one format to another. One format it can output is animated GIFs.

 

ffmpeg -i doom3.mp4 doom3.gif

 

When used with the simplest default options, ffmpeg uses a predefined GIF palette and just stipples the image into these colors:

 

 

Various sites do this - imgur does for sure, I imagine many others as well. If you upload a video of Doom gameplay and have it converted to GIF the above palette will be applied to the video. So I figured I could make a pre-palette-shifted Doom WAD, so when ffmpeg converts it to a GIF, all the colors are already there and it doesn't have to do anything!

 

 

 

 ➡️ 

 

Yeah, please do not use this.

 

ffmpeg playpal.zip

[Wereknight]

Did you know that you've done? THAT'S PERFECT D!ZONE PALETTE SO FAR.

[elend]

That is not.. very good looking. How about instead "forcing" ffmpeg into using the Doom palette? This way we'd get perfect Doom anim gifs.

[GuyMcBrofist]

Looks like ffmpeg owes you a debt of gratitude?

[andrewj]

I believe it's not really possible to do "ordered" dithering with an arbitrary palette like DOOM's.  Hence why ffmpeg uses a carefully crafted palette which can support ordered dithering.

 

Ordered dithering looks a lot better for animated gifs or video than error-diffusion kinds of dithering (like Floyd-Steinberg).  That's because each frame is slightly different, so the errors get diffused differently, and it spreads over the whole image -- a single pixel difference in top left can affect everything else.  This makes animated gifs or video look much "noisier" or "busier" than ordered dithering.