# Animations/GIFs not working after update



## Vicketch (Nov 27, 2022)

After the new update, something probably broke. Animations uploaded previous the update do work fine with no problem but every attempt to upload one after it, ends up being a single normal picture, no movement at all.

Animations already had some problems before the update since thumbnails weren't working at all but at least, you could upload them. Maybe you needed to reupload the source file if the GIF was larger than 1000x1000 but at least that fixed it. But now even if your GIF is smaller than that it won't work and reuploading the source file won't work at all either.

I tried looking for other artists around and all animations I saw were a single picture stuck, no movement at all after the update. Please, this needs a fix soon. A lot of people isn't interested in clicking external links to be able to watch the animations. They would rather see at least a bit of movement in the post! Some help would be really appreciated and if anyone knows a new workaround, please share it! Thank you (And apologies for any mistakes, English isn't my native language)


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## GuffinDoesArt (Nov 27, 2022)

Can confirm, just tried uploading a gif that was below the resolution limit, and it is frozen on the first frame. Gif functionality is practically broken now. Really hope this issue is addressed and fixed quickly, this seems like an insanely huge oversight that should've been tested before release.

Also on the topic of gifs, can there be an official "animation" category when uploading submissions? There's currently no official way to distinguish a gif from a static submission, which is even more tragic now that uploaded gifs aren't working at all.


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## Vicketch (Nov 27, 2022)

GuffinDoesArt said:


> Can confirm, just tried uploading a gif that was below the resolution limit, and it is frozen on the first frame. Gif functionality is practically broken now. Really hope this issue is addressed and fixed quickly, this seems like an insanely huge oversight that should've been tested before release.
> 
> Also on the topic of gifs, can there be an official "animation" category when uploading submissions? There's currently no official way to distinguish a gif from a static submission, which is even more tragic now that uploaded gifs aren't working at all.


I kept checking more posts that are supposed to be animation and no one was able to make them work as far as I know. This is a HUGE problem. I made a trouble ticket and they replied that this issue is already known but nothing about how long it could take to be fixed and I must admit I'm scared about it. It's being years without thumbnails working so I'm scared GIFs now won't work either taking in mind animations are what I like uploading the most (Plus I can't imagine how many artists are struggling now for this)

And yes! Having an animation category would be amazing! To me is not a high priority thing of course but it would be cool. I normally upload them as digital art


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## luffy (Nov 27, 2022)

They're aware of the problem.  Please submit Trouble Tickets:  https://www.furaffinity.net/controls/troubletickets/


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## DragonTalon (Nov 28, 2022)

Vicketch said:


> I kept checking more posts that are supposed to be animation and no one was able to make them work as far as I know. This is a HUGE problem. I made a trouble ticket and they replied that this issue is already known but nothing about how long it could take to be fixed and I must admit I'm scared about it. It's being years without thumbnails working so I'm scared GIFs now won't work either taking in mind animations are what I like uploading the most (Plus I can't imagine how many artists are struggling now for this)
> 
> And yes! Having an animation category would be amazing! To me is not a high priority thing of course but it would be cool. I normally upload them as digital art


I wonder if it's related to the same issue I am having, the site converting all images when it shouldn't.

Try downloading the GIF file off of FA and see if it's been converted and all the animation frames removed.  If that's the case this should all be a fairly easy fix, find the code that is wrongly running uploads through the converter and stop it.


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Nov 30, 2022)

I just got done spending months on an animation project and several hours today fighting to convert it to an APNG only to find this hilariously specific problem occurring at this hilariously specific time.

I get it, big update, things happen. But yeah, super hope this gets resolved soon. As somebody who worked with the public a lot, I can confirm what the OP said - people do _not_ complete additional steps like clicking links or reading words.


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 2, 2022)

...But seriously, is there an ETA on this, even a hazy one, or is this basically the 'custom thumbnail' situation again?

I just had a large animation project crowdfunded entirely by my FA watchers and I would very much like to know when, if ever, I can give it to them. And yes, I could just host it elsewhere with a link but I'd really like to not take the severe drop off in engagement that will occur as a result of that if there's any chance of this getting fixed, soon. Can't imagine what artists who primarily work in this medium are dealing with right now.


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## Vicketch (Dec 2, 2022)

DragonTalon said:


> I wonder if it's related to the same issue I am having, the site converting all images when it shouldn't.
> 
> Try downloading the GIF file off of FA and see if it's been converted and all the animation frames removed.  If that's the case this should all be a fairly easy fix, find the code that is wrongly running uploads through the converter and stop it.


I downloaded the file and it says it's a gif but no movement at all so I assume that's not the problem. But whatever it is I hope it can be fixed sometime soon D:  



WhimsicalSquirrel said:


> I just got done spending months on an animation project and several hours today fighting to convert it to an APNG only to find this hilariously specific problem occurring at this hilariously specific time.
> 
> I get it, big update, things happen. But yeah, super hope this gets resolved soon. As somebody who worked with the public a lot, I can confirm what the OP said - people do _not_ complete additional steps like clicking links or reading words.


I work in this primarily but since this happened I have to do all illustrations. It's not that fun tbh. And people won't click that much on external links. I sent a trouble ticket but all I got was a reply saying they know the problem and are working on it but no estimated time at all. Hope we get a fix sometime soon since it's a serious issue D:


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 2, 2022)

Vicketch said:


> I work in this primarily but since this happened I have to do all illustrations. It's not that fun tbh. And people won't click that much on external links. I sent a trouble ticket but all I got was a reply saying they know the problem and are working on it but no estimated time at all. Hope we get a fix sometime soon since it's a serious issue D:



I find myself baffled that, given how many things it broke at the expense of the artists IE the people that make this website a website, they haven't just reverted it for now until they figure this out. Seems odd to be like "Yeah we kinda broke all your shit but, somebody will fix it eventually, maybe." That's basically why I was hoping for some kind of ballpark ETA. "Working on a fix" is not information we can use, not after the way that phrase has been used on this website over the years. If you don't know, then say you don't know.


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## DragonTalon (Dec 4, 2022)

Vicketch said:


> I downloaded the file and it says it's a gif but no movement at all so I assume that's not the problem. But whatever it is I hope it can be fixed sometime soon D:


That confirms that the recompression is the issue.  I got an answer on my trouble ticket that they are aware and working on a fix.
But it seems that every single image is being converted, no away around it.
Just have to wait for a fix.


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 4, 2022)

DragonTalon said:


> That confirms that the recompression is the issue.  I got an answer on my trouble ticket that they are aware and working on a fix.
> But it seems that every single image is being converted, no away around it.
> Just have to wait for a fix.


I can further confirm this as I redownloaded one of my test gifs and threw it into my animator program and only the first frame showed up. I'm half convincing myself that this and the image re-compression thing isn't a bug but rather an intentional space-saving implementation, but by allowing us to think it's a bug, they can hopefully just wait for us to get bored of waiting for a fix, as we so often do. And I admit that sounds a little tinfoil-hatty, but it's not like I have any actual information to go off of, and allowing an issue as seemingly huge as 'all new animations are broken' to persist for a week and counting with nothing more than a shrug and a 'we'll get to it" seems more bizarre, at least to me.


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## quoting_mungo (Dec 4, 2022)

WhimsicalSquirrel said:


> I can further confirm this as I redownloaded one of my test gifs and threw it into my animator program and only the first frame showed up. I'm half convincing myself that this and the image re-compression thing isn't a bug but rather an intentional space-saving implementation, but by allowing us to think it's a bug, they can hopefully just wait for us to get bored of waiting for a fix, as we so often do. And I admit that sounds a little tinfoil-hatty, but it's not like I have any actual information to go off of, and allowing an issue as seemingly huge as 'all new animations are broken' to persist for a week and counting with nothing more than a shrug and a 'we'll get to it" seems more bizarre, at least to me.


What it looks like to me is that an intentional space-saving implementation (probably related to shoring up the exploit around reuploading submissions to circumvent size limitation) had side effects that hadn't occurred to devs/staff testing the update as a test case. Because some aspects of the feature are still needed, and because this likely doesn't only effect animated .gifs (though they're the most glaring example of it), it's not as simple of a fix as it looks from the outside. I believe FA has previously had issues sometimes with animated .gifs uploaded during peak times, and would guess from what I've gathered from information released that those features were related to image processing (like generating thumbnails and resizing oversized uploads). I know it was something related to that was causing thumbnails to fail to generate sometimes under heavy load. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the update may have increased image processing load to some degree, so it's possible the problem is simply "how do we fix this without creating an image processing bottleneck that breaks other things?" Plus, if animations were missed in testing, chances are they'd want to make sure any fix they put out is tested more extensively so they don't introduce new bugs in general.

These are all educated guesses, but it may help explain why "we're working on it" is not as quick a fix as one might like. Nobody at FA likes broken features any more than you do, I can pretty much guarantee that.


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 4, 2022)

quoting_mungo said:


> These are all educated guesses, but it may help explain why "we're working on it" is not as quick a fix as one might like. Nobody at FA likes broken features any more than you do, I can pretty much guarantee that.



Well my complaint isn't about the lack of speed, per se. It's the lack of information for the past week about it. Numerous people are already worried it'll be one of those things they 'meant to get to' then years down the line, still no fix, and it's affecting artists primarily working in this medium who want to post to their large customer base on the site. As I said, all I can do is speculate since there's been no information regarding this very major hopefully-bug that's being treated like misaligned div padding or something. And I understand, maybe they don't know how long it may take but even that in and of itself would be something worth mentioning other than the 'maybe if we ignore them, they'll go away' approach they've currently chosen.

I mean if they're not gonna temporarily roll the site back to a more functional state until they figure out how to properly implement the update then they could at least provide some kind of time table on all of this. "We know, submit a trouble ticket" is not helpful, especially when the response that doing so affords you is a shorter version of the same one already seen in that week-old Fender journal.


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## GuffinDoesArt (Dec 5, 2022)

The lack of transparency about how and when these issues are getting resolved is the most worrying part about the update. Not too promising when something as big as "all uploaded animations don't work" isn't given a status newer than "we're working on it" after a whole week.


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## drages (Dec 6, 2022)

Being an animator at FA was living hell for years. We still try to make gif work in this age.


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 6, 2022)

hello does anybody work here


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## Vicketch (Dec 6, 2022)

Sadly, so far all we can do seems to be waiting. It's definetely not ideal, specially as said for artists who mostly work in this medium. I had a few animations and things to upload but due to the current situation, to me, it wasn't worth it to continue nor repay my advertising until it's fixed. People would come to my account expecting those animations. However, they would encounter a stuck image with no movement and they would have to be opening other windows all the time. People don't wanna go through that

Everyday I check for new animations people upload to see if they work back again so I don't spam my account and delete that post not working. Taking in mind I have no knowledge of website management and I can imagine it is extremely complicated it's the best I can do


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 6, 2022)

Vicketch said:


> Sadly, so far all we can do seems to be waiting. It's definetely not ideal, specially as said for artists who mostly work in this medium. I had a few animations and things to upload but due to the current situation, to me, it wasn't worth it to continue nor repay my advertising until it's fixed. People would come to my account expecting those animations. However, they would encounter a stuck image with no movement and they would have to be opening other windows all the time. People don't wanna go through that
> 
> Everyday I check for new animations people upload to see if they work back again so I don't spam my account and delete that post not working. Taking in mind I have no knowledge of website management and I can imagine it is extremely complicated it's the best I can do



Waiting, fine. But how hard would it to be to give us _any _semblance of a time table here?

How about this, maybe somebody on FA's staff can fill in this blank. "Animations will not be fixed in fewer than ____ days."

That seems reasonable enough, because it's not even promising a fix date, it'd just tell us how long we can almost certainly expect to wait without one, so we can plan around it.

Okay? Cool? Can somebody on staff fill in that blank, please?


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## Rika Creature (Dec 20, 2022)

its been a few weeks and gifs are still broken, i'm starting to build up a backlog since most the things ive produced lately are 3d animations. please tell me this isnt going to be something that stays broken for like a year


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## luffy (Dec 20, 2022)

WhimsicalSquirrel said:


> Waiting, fine. But how hard would it to be to give us _any _semblance of a time table here?
> 
> How about this, maybe somebody on FA's staff can fill in this blank. "Animations will not be fixed in fewer than ____ days."
> 
> ...


I have.  In the 293 other mentions of this on the forum, lol.  And if you want updates from staff, the forum is not the place to go.  You should submit a Trouble Ticket.

The ETA was the 13th.  Then it was the 16th.  Now it is... _checks_... tomorrow. That's as much as I can tell you, as all I do all day is moderate and remove cub content.


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## GuffinDoesArt (Dec 20, 2022)

luffy said:


> And if you want updates from staff, the forum is not the place to go.  You should submit a Trouble Ticket.


At least in my experience, trouble tickets have been unhelpful with actually getting updates on issues and when they might be fixed. Last ticket response I got said that there was no ETA for the issue regarding broken GIF uploads, but you just said that there's been ETAs for that for the 13th, 16th, and now tomorrow.

Maybe to help with people not being able to sift through hundreds of messages for an acknowledgement of an issue, there should be more frequent use of the website's update journals, something like a Trello for issues, or maybe dedicated dev status channel in the Discord server, to give everyone a solid idea on where the development for the website is at. It would also help going forward in terms of giving people status updates on future issues once the forum is down.


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## RestrainedRaptor (Dec 21, 2022)

GuffinDoesArt said:


> something like a Trello for issues


They still do, but it's hidden now. I wouldn't expect them to open it up again. There's also a GitHub which hasn't seen any activity for 5 years.


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## JendaLinda (Dec 21, 2022)

Opening the site source codes on Github, so community could help improving it, would really help the devs as they seem to be extremely overwhelmed by the amount of work.


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## RestrainedRaptor (Dec 21, 2022)

JendaLinda said:


> Opening the site source codes on Github, so community could help improving it, would really help the devs as they seem to be extremely overwhelmed by the amount of work.


With the current state of the codebase, that would only end up inviting more hacking incidents like the DDOS relating to ImageMagick and the ones where the entire database was stolen and posted online.


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## JendaLinda (Dec 21, 2022)

Yeah that was kind of joke from me. It's really embarrassing it takes so long to fix such simple issue which is probably caused just by one line of code. Anyway it's a holiday season, so let's be more tolerant.


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## luffy (Dec 21, 2022)

JendaLinda said:


> Yeah that was kind of joke from me. It's really embarrassing it takes so long to fix such simple issue which is probably caused just by one line of code. Anyway it's a holiday season, so let's be more tolerant.


To be fair, when the dev went in to fix this, it started as one fix and turned into 6+, lol.  So who knows what's going on in the trenches of FA code.


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## JendaLinda (Dec 21, 2022)

Okay, in that case, that's more tricky. I do some coding occasionally, so it seemed to me like a failing condition or something like that. So fingers crossed, the devs will solve this puzzle soon.


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## ToddVixelle (Dec 21, 2022)




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## ToddVixelle (Dec 21, 2022)

JendaLinda said:


> Okay, in that case, that's more tricky. I do some coding occasionally, so it seemed to me like a failing condition or something like that. So fingers crossed, the devs will solve this puzzle soon.


Large scale projects are like fighting a hydra, you squish one issue and three more pop-up.


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## RestrainedRaptor (Dec 21, 2022)

ToddVixelle said:


> Large scale projects are like fighting a hydra, you squish one issue and three more pop-up.


If the project doesn't have proper planning and documentation, and lacks unit/integration tests, then yes that's what you end up with. Small teams can learn from the same techniques as large, professional software houses (I've worked for a few over the years). Of course, since this wasn't done at the start, it's very hard to get into that position now without at least 2-3 full-time developers.


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## ToddVixelle (Dec 21, 2022)

RestrainedRaptor said:


> If the project doesn't have proper planning and documentation, and lacks unit/integration tests, then yes that's what you end up with. Small teams can learn from the same techniques as large, professional software houses (I've worked for a few over the years). Of course, since this wasn't done at the start, it's very hard to get into that position now without at least 2-3 full-time developers.


By that logic Microsoft Windows would be bug-free.


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## RestrainedRaptor (Dec 21, 2022)

I can't comment on how they do things since I haven't worked there, but I believe they did get rid of most of their QA teams a while ago, so yeah... Also, they have to worry about backwards-compatibility so the risk of breaking changes is exponentially higher.


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 22, 2022)

luffy said:


> I have. In the 293 other mentions of this on the forum, lol. And if you want updates from staff, the forum is not the place to go. You should submit a Trouble Ticket.
> 
> The ETA was the 13th. Then it was the 16th. Now it is... _checks_... tomorrow. That's as much as I can tell you, as all I do all day is moderate and remove cub content.


This reminds me of that King of the Hill episode where Bill's just randomly marking areas in his yard to try and excavate his septic tank until they just end up destroying his entire yard with the backhoe.


GuffinDoesArt said:


> At least in my experience, trouble tickets have been unhelpful with actually getting updates on issues and when they might be fixed. Last ticket response I got said that there was no ETA for the issue regarding broken GIF uploads, but you just said that there's been ETAs for that for the 13th, 16th, and now tomorrow.


And THIS reminds me of that King of the Hill episode where, no matter what ailment someone on the football team has, Coach Sauers just simply says "Take a salt tablet."

"Coach, I'm bleeding...!"

"Salt tablet."

My point being: Instead of sitting around waiting for FA to give updates that don't exist for fixes that will likely never come, we would all do better spending our time watching cartoons.


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## WhimsicalSquirrel (Dec 22, 2022)

Apparently I had to just make one more shitty remark. But I won't take credit for the gifs finally getting fixed.

Even though I could.


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## GabyHamster (Dec 23, 2022)

YAY!! HAPPY HOLIDAY!!


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