Cinemagraph
A mostly frozen photograph with one small area of motion repeating in a quiet loop, such as steam rising from a still cup.
See it
What it is
A cinemagraph is a mostly still image with one isolated area that keeps moving in a short loop: steam rising from a cup, a curtain breathing, or one reflection trembling in water. Photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck coined the term in 2011 for work that sat between a still photograph and a video.
Reach for it when a full video would compete with the page or message, but a still feels lifeless. Start from a locked camera shot, choose a clean frame for the frozen base, and reveal only the repeatable motion through a soft mask. MP4 or WebM usually preserves color and keeps file size lower than an animated GIF.
Gotcha: the loop point is the effect. A jump in steam, exposure, shadow, or camera position breaks the illusion immediately. Crossfade the end into the beginning, keep moving objects away from the mask boundary, and avoid back-and-forth playback when reversed motion would look physically wrong.
Ask AI for it
Build a four-second cinemagraph in Adobe After Effects from this locked shot. Freeze one clean frame as the full-frame base, place the video above it, and reveal only the rising steam with a 20 px feathered mask. Use Time Remapping to overlap the final 12 frames with the opening 12 frames and crossfade their opacity so the steam loops without a jump. Keep every other pixel still, then export an H.264 MP4 through Adobe Media Encoder and transcode a VP9 WebM from it with ffmpeg using libvpx-vp9, keeping identical dimensions and no audio.