So, a bit of pedantry that often doesn’t matter but may be useful to be aware of:
We don’t actually want anyone using “GIFs” anymore. It’s a very inferior format that doesn’t load well on phones. It’s a handy term that can refer to silent looping clips - but most of the time even when they’re in use, they’re done as muted video links. Some sites call these GIFVs or whatever else.
So if you have an mp4 video that you think would be funny muted and looping, don’t try to convert it to GIF, just see where you can upload and embed it. Granted, it sounds like Lemmy still has issues on the embedding bit.
When most ppl say “gif” they mean “mp4” nowadays. Even Telegram just converts all gifs to muted mp4s
I uploaded a gif to lemmy, it seems to pass it to pict-rs and convert it.
Yeah, I think the conversion is where it gets messed up. It seems like webp images bypass this conversion step. It is a relatively new format though, so it won’t work in old browsers.
Disclaimer - I am not fully up to date on the state of the project:
Pict-rs has to balance a couple of concerns. It’s primary purpose is de-duplication, so when the same meme gets uploaded 1000 times, it doesn’t get stored 1000 times. Another important purpose is the ability to apply effects like blurs, which are used to mask NSFW content. Blurring a gif with a 255 color limit is kind of infeasible, so they get converted to a more suitable format first (is mp4 more suitable though 🤷). Pict-rs was originally designed around static images, and kind of grew in scope with time. There are probably some edge-cases we’re hitting.
Do you see the MP4 playing? I uploaded a plain gif, didn’t know it was converted until he posted the screenshot with the error.
While setting up pict-rs on my cluster I noticed a pict-rs environment variable to convert all uploaded pictures to the png format. That may also be activated. I guess that makes de-duplication way easier.
Doesn’t work for me on the mlem app unfortunately
Doesn’t work on jerboa either
mlem is very barebones at the moment, I actually switch between the website and the app on mobile.
Ok, I can see this one. But so fare I only ever see GIFs in the comments but not in posts
After a little of investigating it seems that Lemmy currently unintentionally blocks video files from loading from different sites.
That means that only GIFs (internally handled as mp4 I think) from the same site will load correctly right now.A fix for this has apparently been implemented 4 days ago, so it just depends on when the fix is officially released (currently in beta for version 0.18) and when your instance updates.
Until then, you’ll just have to open the comments or posts on their original site.
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification!
Interestingly enough, right-clicking to open the image in a new tab seems to work 🤔 (Firefox 114)
Yes … very interesting indeed 🤔
Also on Firefox and see the same thing. Odd.
It looks like videos are loaded directly from the original instance instead of being proxied through your home instance. Firefox doesn’t like that by default.
Can’t see anything in Jerboa except a rectangle with ‘obj’ inside of it.
Same, kinda missing all the videos and gifs from that other place
Yes! Videos and Gifs are essential
