Webm and 'image'boards

Hello, I'm sorry if this is inappropriate as I am a newcomer to this board but I figured this would be the best place to discuss this. Hopefully I am not imposing myself or breaking any spoken or unspoken rules. If I am I apologize.

Now on to the topic at hand, some of you may know that recently on /g/ there have been stickies where there was testing of the posting of a format called webm. webm is an open source html5 audio-video container. This means that there is a good possibility that soon there may be the ability to post videos to the image boards. However as of now the sound has been disabled and stripped from all uploads, and ostensibly the reason for this format being tested is to see if it can replace gif with better compression and filesizes. To me, this is an interesting proposition, on one hand I do not think I am entirely opposed to something replacing gif. On the other hand I do wonder if every post can contain a minute or more of good quality video(far more can be squeezed in if liberties are taken with the quality), sans sound, if something very basic and inherent to our image boards as we have known them will change. Furthermore I fear what would happen if it could so easily be changed into video with sound, it seems like if that happens we may lose part of what makes image boards unique by allowing content hosting like that.  I can't quite articulate what that would be at the moment, and I very well may be wrong.

Some would say that this is me being against progress, but I do not see it as such, I do not see progress as destroying what you were in the first place to become something new. Is this a foolish outlook?

Well that's my thoughts on the matter at the moment. What do you think, am I simply too sentimental and trapped in the past, or is there something to it? If there will be changes, will it be for the better or for the worse? I would like to hear your ideas on the matter.

I'll approve webms as long as they don't support audio.

They are great, better than gifs in every sense. But giving boards like /b/ and /v/ the power of making screamers is asking for problems.

>2

I would not be entirely opposed to them replacing or supplanting gifs, but I do wonder if perhaps other restrictions may have to be placed on them to make sure that is all they do. Perhaps duration limits so one can't put too much video in, sacrificing quality to do so. That may be too restrictive, but that's my two cents. Of course all if this is talking about general board use, if a board specifically for them is made I have no issue.

There is a duration limit already.
shorter than 120 seconds long, no larger than 2048x2048 pixels, and less than 3 MB in size