@wazkatango
WebM is a container for VP8 and VP9 formats, and you might as well call it a video format, but that’s not the point.
The point is that Derpibooru would have to give support to
videos, and that’s not going to happen soon.
Just like support to SWF files.
@JP
WebM support is way more than “almost non-existant”: in the Caniuse page you linked it’s clearly supported by 60% of the user base - which is quite a lot. And it doesn’t matter if the support has been added recently: it has been, that’s all. Chrome and Firefox are “evergreen” browsers, so we can pretty much give for granted that every Chrome and Firefox user can watch WebM videos.
Of course we won’t see IE support for “a while” - it’s not even listed in IE’s
to-do list, but that wouldn’t be much important, actually.
But then again, IE8 doesn’t support SVG, and we have quite some SVGs on Derpibooru, and since it started in 2012. Browser support isn’t the point.
And I wouldn’t be worried about the CPU load either. It’s not like you watch two Youtube videos at the same time, do you? For the rest, there’s the
page visibility API which is widely supported.
And their thumbnails could as well be gifs.
I have my browser crashed for absurdly large
pics. Fortunately, Chrome handles processes separately in different sandboxes. A couple of videos wouldn’t be an issue.
You’re right about the servers that would deal with a heavier load, without any doubt. And surely they can’t afford the extra load, at the moment. But it’s the whole concept of video streaming that brings content control issues.