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Site Announcements and Feedback => Announcements/Feedback/Suggestions => Topic started by: sth on Tue, 24 July 2012, 23:37:25

Title: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: sth on Tue, 24 July 2012, 23:37:25
Did animated GIFs just get turned into stills?
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: mkawa on Wed, 25 July 2012, 04:13:24
we did not turn on any options to make this happen, but it is trying to pull down avatars (believe me, you want this), and may be attempting to resize when it does.

if this is the case, the solution is to re-upload your avatar but resize the animated gif to 100x100 before uploading
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: kps on Wed, 25 July 2012, 07:16:57
we did not turn on any options to make this happen
Aw, for a moment I thought geekhack had acquired a sliver of taste.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: sth on Wed, 25 July 2012, 13:31:49
we did not turn on any options to make this happen
Aw, for a moment I thought geekhack had acquired a sliver of taste.

(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltkx9jaxsH1r5r4uyo1_500.gif)
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: sth on Wed, 25 July 2012, 23:25:10
Ah, finally had a chance to throw my avatar into imagemagick. Lookin good ;)
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: MMB on Wed, 25 July 2012, 23:37:18
(http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6789/1343224605181.gif)
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Wildcard on Sat, 28 July 2012, 23:23:51
(http://4.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/12-obama-gifs-to-make-you-laugh/Obama%20on%20Skateboard.gif)
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: The_Beast on Sat, 28 July 2012, 23:32:07
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110314152018/mlpfanart/images/d/dd/Pinkie_Pie_dancing_to_Fluttershy_singing_her_Zecora_song.gif)
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Wildcard on Sat, 28 July 2012, 23:35:43
Show Image
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110314152018/mlpfanart/images/d/dd/Pinkie_Pie_dancing_to_Fluttershy_singing_her_Zecora_song.gif)


And, Still watching ;)

(http://i818.photobucket.com/albums/zz106/bluelfnt/Hamsters/GIFS.gif)
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Coreda on Fri, 26 October 2012, 20:47:17
Hmm, tried uploading my animated profile avatar @ 100x100px and 52kb but it returned a static image instead.

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks  :).
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: reaper on Fri, 26 October 2012, 21:34:03
I was having the same problem but then I resized it down to something like 60x60 (using this free online image editor (http://www.online-image-editor.com/)) and it works! 
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: TheQsanity on Sat, 27 October 2012, 05:35:09
Show Image
(http://4.mshcdn.com/wp-content/gallery/12-obama-gifs-to-make-you-laugh/Obama%20on%20Skateboard.gif)


I didnt know he skates. That is pretty cool.

Show Image
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110314152018/mlpfanart/images/d/dd/Pinkie_Pie_dancing_to_Fluttershy_singing_her_Zecora_song.gif)


And, Still watching ;)

Show Image
(http://i818.photobucket.com/albums/zz106/bluelfnt/Hamsters/GIFS.gif)


Poor hamster! Haha his face was like "wtf?"
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: vun on Sun, 03 March 2013, 20:25:09
Apologies for the necro, but I can't get gifs to animate when used as an avatar, I've tried all sorts of resolutions and file sizes, but so far it just shows up as a still image. Are there limits for gifs? I also couldn't see any guidelines for avatar limits generally, shouldn't those generally be displayed next to the upload feature?
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: hashbaz on Sun, 03 March 2013, 22:23:10
I spent way too long recently trying to get this to work, and it came down to file size for me.  I'm not sure what the file size limit is, but there is one.  And if the image is larger than a certain resolution (100 x 100 I think?) it is resized by the forum software and won't animate.  So your gif needs to be below both file size and length/width limits to work.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Jocelyn on Sun, 03 March 2013, 22:33:59
I spent way too long recently trying to get this to work, and it came down to file size for me.  I'm not sure what the file size limit is, but there is one.  And if the image is larger than a certain resolution (100 x 100 I think?) it is resized by the forum software and won't animate.  So your gif needs to be below both file size and length/width limits to work.

It won't animate if higher than 95x95
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: hashbaz on Sun, 03 March 2013, 22:35:26
I'm not sure what the file size limit is, but there is one.

To be clearer, a gif larger than the limit will upload but not animate.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: vun on Mon, 04 March 2013, 07:03:10
I spent way too long recently trying to get this to work, and it came down to file size for me.  I'm not sure what the file size limit is, but there is one.  And if the image is larger than a certain resolution (100 x 100 I think?) it is resized by the forum software and won't animate.  So your gif needs to be below both file size and length/width limits to work.

It won't animate if higher than 95x95
I had a 76x76 at 78.7KB, wouldn't animate.
Your avatar is 99x76 at 83KB and shows up animated for me at least, so there might be something I'm missing. Is there a limit to frames, and not just size and dimensions?
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Krogenar on Mon, 04 March 2013, 07:58:06
[attachimg=1]

I made this (well, a cropped version) my avatar briefly. But it was far too distracting. Then I had one of Coach McGurk throwing on his shades, (much smaller) and it failed to animate. There must be a magic number on file size/image size that will allow it. Sth's avatar is still animating, but maybe I'll clear my internet cache, LOL!
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Lunartuna on Mon, 04 March 2013, 08:18:26
(Attachment Link)

I made this (well, a cropped version) my avatar briefly. But it was far too distracting. Then I had one of Coach McGurk throwing on his shades, (much smaller) and it failed to animate. There must be a magic number on file size/image size that will allow it. Sth's avatar is still animating, but maybe I'll clear my internet cache, LOL!

Oh god ROFL.

This is probably what it would look like if she was in a bad accident with the vehicle rolling over multiple times.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Krogenar on Mon, 04 March 2013, 08:26:06
Oh god ROFL.
This is probably what it would look like if she was in a bad accident with the vehicle rolling over multiple times.

The story goes that some ... eh, bad-looking photos of Beyonce made it onto the web. So, she asked one of her media flacks to 'take care of it'. This flack didn't know much about how the Interwebz work, so she was trying to find a contact number, so she could ask for the photos to be taken down.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: mkawa on Mon, 04 March 2013, 09:21:00
i didn't know beyonce was epileptic. poor girl :(
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: rknize on Mon, 22 April 2013, 16:02:37
So I walked through the code and I can see what the problem is here.  The upload process always uses the resize logic, so I'm not even sure how anyone manages to get an animated gif to work as an avatar.  I've disabled one of the features that is triggering this, but i suspect it won't be enough.  LMK.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Jocelyn on Mon, 22 April 2013, 16:09:19
So I walked through the code and I can see what the problem is here.  The upload process always uses the resize logic, so I'm not even sure how anyone manages to get an animated gif to work as an avatar.  I've disabled one of the features that is triggering this, but i suspect it won't be enough.  LMK.

People who use animated avatars, resize them down to 95x95 before uploading them :)
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: hashbaz on Thu, 25 April 2013, 11:31:05
I haven't looked at the code, but in my experiments there are both image size and disk space limits on animated gifs.  No larger than 100 x 100 and so many KB (can't remember now how many, of course :P )
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Krogenar on Thu, 25 April 2013, 12:16:27
I haven't looked at the code, but in my experiments there are both image size and disk space limits on animated gifs.  No larger than 100 x 100 and so many KB (can't remember now how many, of course :P )

After some experimenting, the max size was in the 20k to 21k range, I forget which -- it doesn't allow for a lot of animation, but that's fine.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: mkawa on Thu, 25 April 2013, 16:34:56
20kb? weird. i would have at least set it to a power of 2..
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: rknize on Thu, 25 April 2013, 16:53:14
There is no explicit size limit that I could fine, but the aspect ratio calculations before the resize may cause some rounding errors when using exactly 100 as the x or y.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: hashbaz on Fri, 26 April 2013, 14:53:27
There's definitely some kind of file size issue.  My klaxon avatar originally had more frames, but wouldn't animate after upload.  I cut out two or three frames and resubmitted at the same resolution and bam.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: SmallFry on Fri, 26 April 2013, 15:13:26
The agony that your avatar causes my current headache is severe. ;_;
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Glissant on Tue, 30 April 2013, 12:12:55
I have a question. What was changed so that the resizer no longer handles transparency in uploaded avatars? I used to be able to just upload 200x200 (or whatever size I uploaded), and the re-sizer would handle the transparent background without a problem. Now I have to re-size to 100x100 for transparent parts of an avatar to stay transparent.
It's not really a problem for me, but I thought I could just mention it somewhere, and as I saw something might have been changed for the use of animated avatars GD might not be handling stuff correctly anymore *shrug*.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: rknize on Tue, 30 April 2013, 14:29:21
I haven't actually touched anything in that code, so I dunno.  Is it being converted into a PNG by chance?  SMF's handling of this is really awful.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: sth on Tue, 30 April 2013, 17:59:43
maybe just requires some tweaking of where  imagemagick gets called?
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Binge on Mon, 06 May 2013, 01:23:32
I've been trying to get my avvy to work.  It's just frame #1 and nothing beyond that :(
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Jocelyn on Mon, 06 May 2013, 01:24:50
I've been trying to get my avvy to work.  It's just frame #1 and nothing beyond that :(

Make it 95 x 95 and it will work :p
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Binge on Mon, 06 May 2013, 02:00:10
unfortunately that didn't help :(
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Binge on Mon, 06 May 2013, 02:27:07
90x90,
[attachimg=1]

original,
[attachimg=2]
Title: Re: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Jocelyn on Mon, 06 May 2013, 02:29:03
90x90,
(Attachment Link)

original,
(Attachment Link)

Lol that's so ****ing awesome!!!

When I was using a gif for an avatar, I had to shrink it a little below 100 x100 and I believe 95 x 95 worked, but maybe I'm wrong.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Binge on Mon, 06 May 2013, 02:39:20
If I look at the image properties of my avatar it's 2.7kb whereas the gif is 19kb.  Something is amiss :-/
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Jocelyn on Mon, 06 May 2013, 02:41:54
Yes, I just tried messing with size and even hosting it, but no go :(

PS - I loved your Moose avatar video!!
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Binge on Mon, 06 May 2013, 21:17:19
Figured this sticky situation out!

Rule for submitting your animated gif if you use photoshop to compile your picture.

No dimension over 100 pixels
No metadata
64 colors, no more or less
no more than 26 frames
Length of frame delay does not matter.
Use the "web snap" option to give your picture more or less web safe colors.

Problem with my image was that it had metadata and that I had a color that was not recognized by ye-ol web converter when it comes to uploaded gifs.

How did I find this out?

Tolerances!   I was not able to upload my gif animated with more than 26 frames, no more than 100 pixels, metadata, above or below 64 colors etc etc etc, and etc.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: rknize on Mon, 06 May 2013, 21:57:20
LOL...what a pain.  All of this nonsense is happening inside of GC, but there are also some off bits of PHP code for avatars that may be contributing.
Title: Re: Geekhack is turning into reddit.
Post by: Olumin on Thu, 19 May 2016, 20:35:49
I wanted to change my Avatar into a sepia-GIF of kermit the frog, the UFO was only a place-holder, however  it does not animate when uploaded, I followed all the instructions:

Figured this sticky situation out!

Rule for submitting your animated gif if you use photoshop to compile your picture.

No dimension over 100 pixels
No metadata
64 colors, no more or less
no more than 26 frames
Length of frame delay does not matter.
Use the "web snap" option to give your picture more or less web safe colors.

Problem with my image was that it had metadata and that I had a color that was not recognized by ye-ol web converter when it comes to uploaded gifs.

How did I find this out?

Tolerances!   I was not able to upload my gif animated with more than 26 frames, no more than 100 pixels, metadata, above or below 64 colors etc etc etc, and etc.

Is there something I am missing?

This is the GIF I am trying to upload:
(http://im2.ezgif.com/tmp/905d8b3678.gif)

I know it's not because of the colours, since I've tried to upload a monochrome version (only black and white) and that also didn't work. Its also not because of the frames, since its exactly 26 frames, and I also tried to upload version with less and it didn't work. I don't know what "metadata" is tho.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: katushkin on Sat, 21 May 2016, 09:25:42
Maybe try uploading it to another hosting site like imgur? I managed to get mine to work but then someone just edited down the quality and framerate for me.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: user 18 on Tue, 24 May 2016, 22:09:45
There may be a filesize limitation as well -- I'm not certain of all the details as I don't have access to the backend of the site and I've never attempted to make a gif avatar for myself.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: romevi on Tue, 24 May 2016, 23:59:37
Animated avatars are the worst.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: hashbaz on Fri, 27 May 2016, 15:49:53
There is a file size limit. 100K I think?
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Sifo on Fri, 27 May 2016, 17:34:49
Animated avatars are the worst.

excuse me
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Dongulator on Fri, 27 May 2016, 17:44:26
all I know is most icon sized gif's work as avatars here.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: romevi on Fri, 27 May 2016, 18:53:31
Animated avatars are the worst.

excuse me

Shoot, sorry.
What I meant to say was

Mari is the worst.
Title: Re: animated avatars disabled?
Post by: Sifo on Fri, 27 May 2016, 19:25:43
Animated avatars are the worst.

excuse me

Shoot, sorry.
What I meant to say was

Mari is the worst.

put on ignore