We are upgrading to 1.16. One of the things we would like to do is support animated gifs. Unfortunately, there is a surfeit of information about this issue, but nothing I have read so far gives a clear guideline how to go about providing such support. The history of this issue is found in at least the following places:
A Village Pump thread:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Graphics_village_pump/GIF_thread
Some bug tickets, specifically:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22041 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23063 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23063
While the first ticket is marked resolved/fixed, the latter two (which cover the same or at least a very similar issue) are marked new. The last entry in the 3rd bug ticket is dated 2010-05-08.
So, I wonder if anyone is able (and is willing) to supply the following information:
+ The version of imagemagick that we should install for animated gif support.
+ Whether 1.16.0 is sufficient for non-buggy animated gif support.
+ Is there any configuration required for animated gif support, other than setting $wgMaxAnimatedGifArea?
+ Is there anything else we need to do to support animated gifs?
Thanks,
On 22/10/10 17:35, Dan Nessett wrote:
We are upgrading to 1.16. One of the things we would like to do is support animated gifs. Unfortunately, there is a surfeit of information about this issue, but nothing I have read so far gives a clear guideline how to go about providing such support. The history of this issue is found in at least the following places:
A Village Pump thread:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Graphics_village_pump/GIF_thread
Some bug tickets, specifically:
That is a Wikimedia sysadmin issue and does not apply to other installations.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23063 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23063
While the first ticket is marked resolved/fixed, the latter two (which cover the same or at least a very similar issue) are marked new. The last entry in the 3rd bug ticket is dated 2010-05-08.
That is two copies of the same link. See below for a discussion of it.
So, I wonder if anyone is able (and is willing) to supply the following information:
- The version of imagemagick that we should install for animated gif
support.
Whether 1.16.0 is sufficient for non-buggy animated gif support.
Is there any configuration required for animated gif support, other
than setting $wgMaxAnimatedGifArea?
- Is there anything else we need to do to support animated gifs?
MediaWiki and ImageMagick have both supported animated GIFs since forever. You don't need any special version.
The recent problems with animated GIFs at Wikimedia were related to changing usage patterns, specifically an increasing tendency to convert large videos into animated GIF format. ImageMagick handles large animated GIFs in a very inefficient way. This led to several new resource limit features being developed, in order to provide more useful and stable error messages, as opposed to letting ImageMagick hit a memory or time limit.
If your users stick to using animated GIF in its traditional applications, e.g. MySpace-style sparkling flourishes and looping diagram animations, then you should have no trouble. If your users wish to convert hours of MPEG video to animated GIF format and have it scaled by your servers, then your choice of MediaWiki version and resource limit configuration will determine what sort of error message the users see. Ideally, this should be an informative "image too large" error, rather than a browser timeout because the server has gone into swap and died.
-- Tim Starling
On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 15:40:36 -0400, Tim Starling wrote:
On 22/10/10 17:35, Dan Nessett wrote:
We are upgrading to 1.16. One of the things we would like to do is support animated gifs. Unfortunately, there is a surfeit of information about this issue, but nothing I have read so far gives a clear guideline how to go about providing such support. The history of this issue is found in at least the following places:
A Village Pump thread:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Graphics_village_pump/
GIF_thread
Some bug tickets, specifically:
That is a Wikimedia sysadmin issue and does not apply to other installations.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23063 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23063
While the first ticket is marked resolved/fixed, the latter two (which cover the same or at least a very similar issue) are marked new. The last entry in the 3rd bug ticket is dated 2010-05-08.
That is two copies of the same link. See below for a discussion of it.
So, I wonder if anyone is able (and is willing) to supply the following information:
- The version of imagemagick that we should install for animated gif
support.
Whether 1.16.0 is sufficient for non-buggy animated gif support.
Is there any configuration required for animated gif support, other
than setting $wgMaxAnimatedGifArea?
- Is there anything else we need to do to support animated gifs?
MediaWiki and ImageMagick have both supported animated GIFs since forever. You don't need any special version.
The recent problems with animated GIFs at Wikimedia were related to changing usage patterns, specifically an increasing tendency to convert large videos into animated GIF format. ImageMagick handles large animated GIFs in a very inefficient way. This led to several new resource limit features being developed, in order to provide more useful and stable error messages, as opposed to letting ImageMagick hit a memory or time limit.
If your users stick to using animated GIF in its traditional applications, e.g. MySpace-style sparkling flourishes and looping diagram animations, then you should have no trouble. If your users wish to convert hours of MPEG video to animated GIF format and have it scaled by your servers, then your choice of MediaWiki version and resource limit configuration will determine what sort of error message the users see. Ideally, this should be an informative "image too large" error, rather than a browser timeout because the server has gone into swap and died.
-- Tim Starling
Thanks for the information. We are currently running 1.13.2 and have had to ask our users to stop uploading animated gifs, since they brought our servers to their knees. So, I think we are in a similar position to that Wikipedia found itself until recently.
Would you be willing to tell us what version of Imagemagick you use?
Dan Nessett
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org