GIF animations slow down CoSpace

Hi,

I’m creating an online Expo where video, Animated GIF’s, 3D objects and still images come together.

To keep it 'loadable" and not to heavy i will have different scenes and rooms to view the art.

I want to use animated GIF’s / stickers (with alpha layer) in my rooms. Although im experiencing that the CoSpace in editing and in view mode gets really slow (already with 1 GIF) on my computer. On Ipad and phone it views much faster. I Already tried to make the GIF really short (1 Sec, 12 frames) and small size (262kb) but still really slow.

Is there a smart or ‘right’ way to import GIFs, or is there video compression with alpha that will work :)?

Hope somebody knows :smiley:

Yes, GIFs are very problematic in CoSpaces - almost to the point where I think they should be removed from the application. A single GIF can cause the editor to become completely unusable (on Google Chrome), and I usually discourage students from using it.

@Nikolay, any thoughts on this?

Geoff @ TechLeap

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@ Techleapnz

Thanks for your reaction and info. Good to hear thats it’s the GIF’s that make it slow and now my aproach :wink:

I’m thinking of a solution to create short animations with .PNG Stills and let them switch in time using CoBlocks.

I’m very new to programming with CoBlocks maybe someone now’s the right solution. What i wanna do:

I want to have 5 PNG images in a list where every PNG is shown for 0,2 sec, this loops go’s on forever.

I already tried a solution with the transparency see image in post) , but i don’t know how to add a timer to this. And maybe this not the right approach at all :relaxed:?Screen Shot 2020-08-20 at 09.22.32

Hi @Willemijn_van_arnhem,

You could use mp4 video files instead of gifs. That would decrease memory usage dramatically

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Hi Nikolay,

Thanks for your reply :+1:
I found that out, but MP4 does not support Alpha witch i would love to use.

I figured out a way to Recreate the GIF concept with CoBlocks and PNG images :slight_smile:

And to inspire/help others,

this is my final set-up for a 5 frame animation made out of a PNG Sequince and with Coblocks

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Just one more question :slight_smile:

I created a Function to easy change the imput frames. Is it possible to save functions and use them in other scenes/Cospaces?

That would be so awesome !

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Hi @Willemijn_van_arnhem,

Currently it is not possible. This is a nice feature proposal and we will discuss it.

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You can Copy & Paste functions from one scene/CoSpace to another though, so you could create a Library of your favourite functions in a single CoSpace and grab functions when needed.

Geoff @ TechLeap

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Thanks for the tip! Thats a smart one! :slight_smile:

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Thnx a lot, very useful. Gretings from Bogotá, Colombia!