If a user tries to demonstrate something about a game...

Do you prefer a GIF they made or a video recording (YouTube)?

I've been self-conscious about this since I started making recordings a few months ago. It seems like advertising or a "look at me" attitude, which is looked down upon on pretty much any forum. I've thought of making GIFs instead, since they can't get any views or likes, but the issue with that is that they're far bigger than videos, being uncompressed.

While on the subject, is there a way to embed a video here and make it start at a specific time?

It would depend on the length. If its less than 10-15 seconds, a gif is best. As for sizes, i think some image uploading sites have gifv/webm which i think is just mp4.

I wouldn't mind a video made with the purpose of showing something particular, as long as I know what it is before I click on the link. If it was a link to a review/Let's Play-esque video, however, I personally wouldn't click on that because I tend to avoid those videos whenever possible (having seen FAR too many bad ones). GIFs are usually preferable to me--they're quick and easy and don't pollute my YT recommendations with things I maybe don't want.

As for your other question, if you click the share button on a YT video, you can check a time to have the video start at and get a link to the video at directly that moment. No clue if that's something that other video providers do.

If it`s a Youtube video you can go to the point you want to start at while watching the video on Youtube then right click and choose "copy video link from this timestamp" (or something like that). Then just use that link when embedding the video here on Giantbomb an the video will start at the specific time you chose.

Sorry this is a bit pedantic, but GIFs are compressed. The format uses LZW compression, which is lossless. That may be the difference you're thinking of: with lossless compression you can't control the file size, whereas most video formats use lossy compression, which allows you to trade off image quality for file size. But even so there are external tools that can pre-apply lossy compression to images before putting them into a GIF, so further compression of GIFs is certainly possible.

And to answer the question, I rarely click video links in forum posts, but I'll usually give a GIF a few seconds.

But the thing is, when you pause a YouTube video, it will stop loading after a point. A ten second GIF at a resolution of 800x450 is quite a lot bigger than a 1920x1080 mp4. I have a GIF here of an 8 second video that is 48 MB. The cut video is only 38 MB (40,000 kbps) and has sound and more frames. Well, that's before YouTube compression, which makes it much smaller than that. But the GIF is 25 frames per second. At 10 frames per second, it is only 20 MB. 10 frames looks a lot worse than 60 frames, though. That's why I'm asking.

By Let's Play, do you mean with commentary? You would have no issue if it didn't have commentary?

@ezekiel: You should switch to using one of the small video formats, like on Gfycat.com and other sites. A very short video can be put up on sites like that and take just a few MB at most, and they load MUCH faster for everyone on the net as well.

If you have a hard time trimming small videos to GIF link, I suggest MPEG_StreamClip as software to use for that. I open it up, select a start and end point, and hit the trim button. Problem solved in less than a minute.

I much prefer written instructions with short gifs interspersed throughout the guide.

I prefer written instruction with no images anywhere.

I'd say it highly depends on what kinda video you're making. If it's something like a 1-2 minute video just illustrating a bug, mechanic, feature or similar things I wouldn't bat an eye, but if it's a 10 minute guide, walkthrough, let's play, etc and you run a YT channel where this is a regular feature it starts to look a lot like self promotion.

@nodima: This person knows what's up. If I have to watch you bumbling around or wait for you to get to the part I'm stuck at you've already lost me.

Just write some text and I can skim read to the part I need and save myself valuable time.

jifs always seem really low framerate so I prefer videos I suppose.