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Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

Anonymous
Not applicable

Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

Has anyone else noticed that on THIS NEW FORUM animated GIFs run at varying speeds, at different times of day !

 

I first noticed that some GIFs I've used, when previewed or posted here, ran through each frame at a slow and noticeably varying rate !.  These same files worked perfectly normally on the old forum, and when viewed (as a file) in Firefox, but when uploaded to this forum the speed can be all over the place, and oddly it doesn't happen all the time.

 

The most recent case of this was yesterday when I had added the standard forum Cheesy emoticon, but the eyes were moving so quickly that they were a blur, but then at other times randomly slowed so much that it was having trouble stepping through each frame.

 

I was running Firefox v46, with no addons (other than Flash & Java), and the PC was barely registering any CPU load and was not short of memory.

 

What is it that regulates the stepping speed of GIFs, and what it is about THIS FORUM which is upsetting that timing ?

 

Undecided

6 REPLIES 6
w23
Pro
Posts: 6,347
Thanks: 96
Fixes: 4
Registered: ‎08-01-2008

Re: Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

I've noticed the animation speed vary with different devices and browsers at times (that was true of the 'old place') but never (noticed) a variation on the same device/browser )though I gave up with Firefox a long time ago).

Call me 'w23'
At any given moment in the universe many things happen. Coincidence is a matter of how close these events are in space, time and relationship.
Opinions expressed in forum posts are those of the poster, others may have different views.
Anotherone
Champion
Posts: 19,107
Thanks: 457
Fixes: 21
Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

Did anything else appear slightly slow at the time? - accepting that it may be difficult for you to notice that if things seem slow to you anyway. We noticed during testing that whilst some updates were being done, things slowed down during the update, some updates had a much greater impact on speed than others. I'm wondering if Lithium were doing any minor updates at the time.

They have certain done some updates and restarted the Forum (that restart would have been overnight sometime in the last day or two) as the release is now showing as r306380 previously r303773. I wonder if we'll notice anything has been fixed Lips_are_sealed

(Read posts showing as Unread certainly hasn't!)

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

No nothing else seems slow at the time, and as I said I've also seen the animations running too quickly as well,  so seems unlikely to be a high-load issue as those would only be showing slowdowns, and not speed-ups.

 

This effect is still seen long after the forum page has loaded, no other browser tabs open, and the computer is doing nothing else.  Refreshing the page doesn't make any difference either.  It looks and feels as if being on a forum page has caused the GIF animation time reference to be lost and the clock rate is or has drifted from whatever it is supposed to be.

 

Having said that, this variable animate rate only occurs on tabs showing forum pages.  So if I upload a GIF to a forum page and it is displaying these weird symptoms, and then I open a second browser tab and display THE SAME GIF but not embedded in a forum page,  then the forum page GIF will still be misbehaving but the GIF in the non-forum tab will be displaying normally. 

 

So whatever is going on here, hasn't messed up the entire browser.

 

I've seen this on three different computers, each with different Firefox versions.

 

The only thing I can think of, is maybe it's Lithium's background real-time notification service causing an unexpected interaction with the associated pages ?

 

Crazy2

Anotherone
Champion
Posts: 19,107
Thanks: 457
Fixes: 21
Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

Nibiru wrote:
The only thing I can think of, is maybe it's Lithium's background real-time notification service causing an unexpected interaction with the associated pages ?

Now there would be a surprise Roll_eyes

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

@Anonymous, @w23@Anotherone - Although not part of the original GIF specification the frame timing for animations are part of the extension block used to define the image frame. I suspect that the display of these animations could vary depending on the software used to create and display them.

In order for the animation to work it requires clock time on the CPU so in theory if the PC is busy then the animations could take a hit, but some browsers (I.E., Chrome) slow them down regardless when the frame rate is over 20 frames a second, but I'm not sure if FF does.

If the browser is obeying the timings defined in the GIFs' frames then in theory they should not be able to run any faster than the timings allow for. Maybe what you are seeing is frame catch up when the processor is busy with other things. Or  this is Firefoxism but if you can point me to a page containing these I'll have a look using FF on Mac, to see what effect I get.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Forum animated GIFs running at random speeds !

The trouble with reporting this issue, is that it doesn't happen for most of the time,  there are periods when it occurs (a bit like exchange congestion), and then an hour later it will have gone again.

 

Currently everything is working as expected.

 

When the issue is occurring, even a full PC reboot and revisit to the forum, doesn't fix it.

 

There are no specific or particular pages that this likely to happen on.

 

This isn't just an issue with GIFs that I've uploaded, as it also happens with the built in emoticons too.