Non Animated Avatar

[panzerscope]

Hello All,

So I just want to mention the following

1. Usergroups have Animated Avatars enabled
2. Gif Avatars used are smaller than the limit both in pixels and file sizes.

The issue I am having is that my avatar will be animated in my profile area, as you would expect. However if I then refresh the page of a thread to display the new Gif avatar in my postbit, it is not animated. I have tried re-uploading, but the same results.

What am I missing ?

I have done some research and seen that if the system resizes the Gif Avatar upon upload, it will kill the animation. However I would not expect my VB setup to re-size them as the ones I have tried are all within the limits I have configured.

I am using VB 5.5.3

Any help is gladly received.

Regards,
P

[Wayne Luke]

Avatars work a little differently from attachments. The maximum avatar file size is a usergroup permission. This file size must be greater than the file size of your animated GIF file. Avatars are limited in dimensions to 200 X 200 pixels and will be thumbnailed to fit within design specifications in certain areas. Thumbnails will most likely be JPEG files which do not allow for animation.

[panzerscope]

Hello Wayne,

Thanks for your reply. So to confirm, is 200x200 a hard limit set by VB for any Avatar file type ? I currently had mine set to 240x240.

Thanks,
P

[Wayne Luke]

Currently, 200 X 200 is a hard limit.

[panzerscope]

Ok thanks for confirming. I will re align my sizes with this and go from there

[panzerscope]

Hmm this is odd.

So I can get a Gif Avatar of 100x100 @ 122k to function. However trying a 150x150 @ 247k refuses to work. Again all my user group settings are allowing above this size limit (200x200, 260k). I have also adjusted the Custom CSS on my site to accommodate the changes, again still not functioning on my user post bit within threads. Any other ideas ?

Mu current CSS just in case is as below

/* start custom avatar size/position & post bit width - START */

.l-col__flex-3, .l-row__fixed--left > .l-col__flex-3 {
margin-left:75px!important;
}

.b-userinfo__details {
width: 200px;
margin-left:2px;
}
.l-desktop .b-userinfo {
width: 200px;
}
.b-avatar--m {
height: 200px!important;
width: 200px!important;
}

.b-avatar--m > img {
max-height: 200px!important;
max-width: 200px !important;
height: 200px!important;
width: 200px!important;
}

.l-desktop .b-userinfo {
margin-top: 20px;
}
.l-desktop .b-userinfo {
margin-right: 2px;
}
media only screen and (max-width: 783px) {
.l-col__flex-3, .l-row__fixed--left > .l-col__flex-3 {
margin-left:0px!important;
float:none!important;
}
.b-userinfo__details {
margin-left: 0;
display:none;
}

.b-avatar--m {
height: 60px!important;
width: 60px!important;
}

.b-avatar--m > img {
max-height: 60px!important;
max-width: 60px !important;
height: 60px!important;
width: 60px!important;
}}
/* start custom avatar size/position & post bit width - END */

[Wayne Luke]

It has nothing to do with CSS. The CSS doesn't change animation in anyway.

https://forum.vbulletin.com/forum/vb...-certain-areas

[panzerscope]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding.

I read your post again and as per my last post I made sure that the GIF I am attempting to use is below the maximum limitations I have set in my usergroups. My user groups have been set to 180x180 @ 350KB.

The Animated Gif that fails is 150x150 @247KB. If I use a smaller GIF however at 100x100 @ 122KB, it will work just fine, which is confusing. Why would one GIF below the limits work, but the other GIF also below the limits NOT work.

Thanks !

[Wayne Luke]

See the post I linked to. It seems thumbnails aren't animated. Maybe they never were. I haven't kept track as I am not a fan of animated avatars and am not even sure if they are enabled on this site or not.

[panzerscope]

Hmmm,

I read the link. The odd thing is, it is clear GIFs work on VB as it stands now, but it seems pushing past 100x100 sizing for the GIF will break the animation, that is the bit I do not get.

[In Omnibus]

It would stand to reason thumbnails are not and have never been animated. Animated GIF images have to load, in some cases, hundreds of frames. Allowing everyone to use them would slow a site page load time measurably. They could, in fact, cause a page not load at all, especially on mobile devices.

[Wayne Luke]

Animated Thumbnails aren't going to add substantial time to the page load. Images are cached during the first load and maintained in the browser's cache for a minimum of two weeks. In reality, they end up cached for a lot longer. This is why we have to add a cachebuster to them when the user uploads a new avatar.

A thumbnail must be able to be resized to the value for their size under Settings -> Options -> Image Settings. If we can't resize to that value while maintaining it as a GIF file, then we will save the thumbnail as a JPEG. Which doesn't support animation. Thus only the first frame gets saved. Due to recent changes, we may have introduced a bug in manipulating images. In general, ImageMagick is considered to be better than GD. We introduced the PHP IMAGICK class in 5.5.4 and will be deprecating the command line Image Magick in the future. This is where the changes come in. Any time you call an external utility, there are security risks involved. We recently hardened ImageMagick in 5.5.3 to protect against some potential risks. There is also general risks in uploading images to begin with that we're constantly working to secure because the standards are nice but rarely followed by all app developers and device manufacturers.

What library are you using?
What version is the library? GD can be found in the PHP Info output. ImageMagick from the command line.
If you know, what tool created the animated GIF?
What version of PHP are you using?
Are you storing Avatars in the file system or database?

It should be noted that Avatars have a hard limit of 200 X 200 pixels. It doesn't matter what is specified for the dimensions in the usergroup at this time. The only variable that can be changed is the file size.

[Wayne Luke]

What are the specific images that aren't animating? Please ZIP them and upload to this site or place them on a Cloud Share site for download without resizing or vBulletin processing them.

[panzerscope]

Thanks for all the info, I will take a further look into this. Ultimately I think accommodating for Animated Gifs requires more work than it is worth.

[panzerscope]

Further you your last message, this is the GIF in question