[FFmpeg-devel] Animated GIF support

[Don Moir]

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Paul B Mahol" <onemda at gmail.com>
> To: "FFmpeg development discussions and patches" <ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 7:55 PM
> Subject: Re: [FFmpeg-devel] Animated GIF support
>
>
>> On 12/20/12, Don Moir <donmoir at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Paul B Mahol" <onemda at gmail.com>
>>> To: "FFmpeg development discussions and patches" <ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 7:41 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [FFmpeg-devel] Animated GIF support
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 12/19/12, Don Moir <donmoir at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: "Vitaliy Sugrobov" <vsugrob at hotmail.com>
>>>>> To: <ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org>
>>>>> Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2012 9:15 PM
>>>>> Subject: [FFmpeg-devel] Animated GIF support
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi. I would like to participate in development of animated gif decoding
>>>>>> support.
>>>>>> Actually i've already implemented this feature by adding gif demuxer
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> slightly changing
>>>>>> existing gif decoder, but it is not complete yet. There is a problem
>>>>>> with
>>>>>> variable delay between
>>>>>> frames in gif: i cannot make it work. I tried to set time base via
>>>>>> avpriv_set_pts_info (1 for numerator, 25 for denominator) in my
>>>>>> demuxer's
>>>>>> gif_read_header(),
>>>>>> at the same time in gif_read_packet() i set proper pts, dts and
>>>>>> duration
>>>>>> for each succesive packet.
>>>>>> But it doesn't work: conversion from gif to any kind of video gives me
>>>>>> output with
>>>>>> 25 frames per second rate and constant delay between frames. Please
>>>>>> point
>>>>>> me in the right direction.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't use ffmpeg for gif's but did a comparison of latest gif patches
>>>>> and
>>>>> found some problems with ffmpeg animtated gif support.
>>>>>
>>>>> Several had no transparency which should have been transparent and hears
>>>>> a
>>>>> couple samples of that:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://sms.pangolin.com/temp/chompy.gif  - shows gray background
>>>>>
>>>>> http://sms.pangolin.com/temp/cool.gif  - shows black background
>>>>>
>>>>> This one gets transparency right but seems to have the wrong delay. The
>>>>> delay value I get is 15 which is 150ms. With ffmpeg its way
>>>>> to fast.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://sms.pangolin.com/temp/crazy.gif  - 2 frames and animates too fast
>>>>>
>>>>> This one caused me to crash in avcodec_decode_video2:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://sms.pangolin.com/temp/heart.gif
>>>>>
>>>>> I have many more gifs that may cause problems and if you decide to fix
>>>>> the
>>>>> above I will test it some more. All of the above
>>>>> displayed normally outside of ffmpeg.
>>>>
>>>> Please open bug report for such problems. At least I can not keep
>>>> track of all mailing list threads.
>>>
>>> Since I do not use ffmpeg for most image types and probably never well,
>>> consider this a public service that I at least spent some
>>> time testing it more completely. I don't wish to spend any more time on it,
>>> but if fixes are made I will test it. If someone wants
>>> to file bug reports then have at it. I think to often patches are made
>>> without complete testing.
>>
>> So you are saying that gif animation support should be removed?
>
> To me I don't care if you have animated gif support in ffmpeg since I don't use ffmpeg for that, but I am sure it matters to some 
> that expects it to behave correctly.
>
>> People are not perfect so expecting perfect code is pointless.
>
> I don't expect perfect code, but it took me less then 10 minutes to come up with mulitple problems. When I test something, I do a 
> number of tests and comparisons and still don't always get it right but give it a good shot.
>
> I think its up to Vitaliy to set it straight.

By the way, if it gets to a point where bugs are not so easy to produce, I will file a bug report. When it got to the point where it 
crashed I just gave up testing.

As it stands, I would end up spending an endless amount of time with bug reports and Carl telling me its not acceptable with 
something I don't even use.