Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

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Greenlaw
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Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by Greenlaw »

Hi,

I'm seeing a problem posting a certain GIF file. Every time I go through the forum's TinyPic uploader, after a long time, I get a 503 server error. If I upload to another image host, imgur, for example, I see the word 'image' but not the image itself.

Either method works for other GIF's I've created, so I think the problem is with this particular file:

https://imgur.com/a/ZwFCUcQ

Any idea why this one doesn't work? Just some guesses but: Maybe the file is slightly corrupt and the forum's server can't process it? Maybe the filesize is too big? (Seems unlikely, it's a little over 500k.) Too many frames in the GIF?

The above GIF originally came out of Camtasia, but I also tried resaving the file in Photoshop and I still get the 503 error.

Thanks in advance for any helpful info.
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synthsin75
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by synthsin75 »

I had the same problem with your gif. I used ezgif.com to remove every other frame, getting it down to a bit over 100 frame.
Image
So it seems the number of frames was likely the problem.
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Maestral
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by Maestral »

Obviously, I`ll need to refresh my uploading routines so I took a closer look at your gif. There is ~ 14.5 sec of animation, 243 frames - alas fr is 16.667? I`m pretty much sure that size (px`s nor kb`s) or bit depth are not an issue but perhaps that fr could be the reason why it did not work.

I`m asking for a friend - what sw did you use to make this gif? ,)
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Greenlaw
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by Greenlaw »

Thanks for testing that and confirming what was wrong with my file, Wes! That's very good to know.

I'll stick to keeping my GIF's to around 100 frames for now but any idea what the actual limit is?
Last edited by Greenlaw on Sun Aug 19, 2018 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by Greenlaw »

Maestral wrote:I`m asking for a friend - what sw did you use to make this gif? ,)
I wanted to capture the Workspace UI in action so I used Camtasia to record, edit and output the GIF. I'm not sure why the framerate is weird...I think the original recording was maybe 15 fps, and output should have been matched, but I should check on that.

Later, I recompiled the GIF using Photoshop but that didn't help. Same issue and it made the file size even bigger, so this version was not uploaded.

I also have Movavi Screen Capture. I'll try a similar test with this and compare the results with the Camtasia output.
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synthsin75
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by synthsin75 »

NP. I guess you'd have to find the limit by trial and error, since I'm not finding any gif-specific info from TinyPic.

It might be worthwhile to convert a preview animation to gif, instead of screen capture. You could import the preview animation and export as gif. Image quality may be an issue, but maybe increase the resolution for preview and decrease it when outputting the gif.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by Greenlaw »

Thanks for the tips. Sometimes I do use Preview Animation for a quick anim demo, but that mode doesn't record user interactivity.

In this case, that probably would have been fine I guess, except I'd lose the bone labels and would have to add them as part of the artwork and I didn't really want to spend that much time on it. Of course, in the end, I wound up spending a lot more time trying to fix the GIF problem anyway. Oh, well.

I wish there were more options for Preview Animation. It's great for quickly evaluating animation changes (what it was designed for,) but there have been a few times at work where I was asked to render out a quick rig demo but the res quality was too low and the missing bone labels made the demo useless for presentation. (Thus, the screen recorder.) I made a request for that a few years ago...I'd re-submit but, personally, there's other stuff I rather the devs work on right now. :)
chucky
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by chucky »

You're posting as a video, not image right?

TinyPic is very unreliable, sometimes fail after fail but using video for gif usually works for me.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by Greenlaw »

Capturing through third-party screen recorder and rendering as GIF from there.

Normally, I'd render a GIF directly from Moho but I wanted to capture the user interaction. Actually, normally, I'd post something like that as a video on Vimeo or YT, but this clip was so short I figured a looping GIF might make more sense.

In this case, going GIF was more trouble than I expected but now I know my options better, so it's all good. :)
Last edited by Greenlaw on Mon Aug 20, 2018 5:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
chucky
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by chucky »

Image
I had problems uploading this gif last week.
Just go tinypic but use video instead of image and upload the gif... doesn't work?
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Greenlaw
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by Greenlaw »

Oh, I see what you mean. Sorry, I misunderstood you.

Re: the TinyPic Video option, I assumed that was for actual video files and never thought that a GIF might be considered a video too. I'll try an upload test with the original GIF. (The lower-fps version Wes recompiled for me is fine but now I'm curious.)
Last edited by Greenlaw on Mon Aug 20, 2018 6:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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synthsin75
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by synthsin75 »

I was curious too. Still no luck uploading Dennis' original gif as video, here or directly to Tinypic.
chucky
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by chucky »

Greenlaw wrote:Oh, I see what you mean. Sorry, I misunderstood you.

Re: the TinyPic Video option, I assumed that was for actual video files and never considered that a GIF might be considered a video too. I'll try an upload test with the original GIF. (The lower-fps version Wes recompiled for me it fine but now I'm curious.)
No probs Dennis, yeah it's a weird one, Gif being video... I guess we can't argue with the logic but it's still odd.
Actually I never tried using TinyPic for mp4 or anything, I just stumbled into the gif video thing when I was having similar difficulties.
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synthsin75
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by synthsin75 »

That balloon gif is 145 frames and Dennis original is 243. So if I had to guess, we're still dealing with a frame limit...which might be around 200.

EDIT: Chopping Dennis' gif down to 150 frames worked, but 151 frames didn't.
chucky
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Re: Problem posting a certain GIF to forum

Post by chucky »

Aaaah
150 got it
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