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Animated images and file size

Kalavinka

Something about magnets
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A lot of Generation V move images (and move images in general) fall under the Category:Images needing to be animated category.

That's not the problem; the problem is that for most moves (at least), the resulting image's file size is much too large for the archives to handle. I did an animated V-create a while back, trimming it to only the absolutely necessary frames (ie. no HP bar or whatever), and the animated PNG turned out to be over 5MB @ 60 frames (I'm assuming 30 frames results in a smaller file size, but for Generation V at least, I'd like to stick as close to the game as possible, and that means 60FPS for battle images).

I think this would also be a problem with the more "flashy" G4 moves (Draco Meteor, Judgment etc.), which use 30FPS; the only way to resolve this seems to be increasing the filesize limit from its current 2MB limit. Either that, or we don't use animated images for "flashy" moves.

I don't know if PNG compressors work with animated images; if they do, I'll use them, but I don't know how far the compressions can go without losing quality.
 
Posting whatever program you use to make these images would also help; different programs will compress differently (I can save perfectly identical images as .PNG files in both Photoshop and GIMP, but the filesize ends up ever-so-slightly larger on the one saved in GIMP). I've seen other programs still that will output massive files, even using the same settings as Photoshop or a similar program.

Depending on the PNG compressor, you might be able to compress an animated image; easiest way to find out is to try it. More than likely, if the first few programs don't work with aniPNGs, the rest of them won't work either, but it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot.
 
V-create (5.0MB, hence hyperlink instead of direct)
V-create, optimised (2.15MB)

I use IrfanView to extract the frames, Bulk Image Converter to convert them from BMP to PNG, and Japng to create the animated file itself.

I don't use Photoshop because I don't have it, and I have no idea how to get GIMP's APNG plug-in to work.

You can find a nice APNG Optimizer on http://animatedpng.com/

Didn't notice that, I'll try it now.

EDIT: The compressor works (from 5.0MB to 2.15MB), but...

May I ask you to post an example? I've been uploading files at 60FPS that are around 0,9 MB and >2 MB (still, lots of them can be uploaded without any trouble); how did you get a 5 MB file?

...it still won't go through. How'd you manage to squeeze a >2MB file into the archives?
 
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Well, I use Animget for extracting the files, Photoshop for converting from BMP to PNG and JAPNG Editor for it; it works pretty well and I get small files, of course that it depends on the move type, the size varies.
The reason of why I'm able to bypass that, it's because I'm an Administrator in there; if you want, I can upload it for you. But still, you need to fix that file, the FPS/speed of the file is a bit too fast.
 
How about no? Let's not increase the already grossly huge file size limit. Allowing everybody to have 200 or 300 KB Size avatars would seriously lag the forums.

And for some of the moves, it might make more sense to remove a few unnecessary frames here and there. I'm not skilled in animation, but I do know that often you there are frames that, when removed, don't have much of an effect on the image besides a slight change in smoothness. in any case, find a way to reduce the number of frames as much as possible while reducing the smoothness as little as possible, or don't use such moves as avatars at all.

If it is impossible to tinker with it enough to make it below the limit, then you should just give up on that and not try to bend the site to fit your own preferences or desires.
 
Frame rate is important in keeping graphical consistency with the games, but over the Internet, we do have to consider other users' bandwidth. I would suggest using 15 FPS as the standard frame rate - it should be at least good enough for animations and reduces file size even more. 60 FPS, while being the perfect frame rate, is less than ideal for images transmitted over the Internet.
 
How about no? Let's not increase the already grossly huge file size limit. Allowing everybody to have 200 or 300 KB Size avatars would seriously lag the forums.

And for some of the moves, it might make more sense to remove a few unnecessary frames here and there. I'm not skilled in animation, but I do know that often you there are frames that, when removed, don't have much of an effect on the image besides a slight change in smoothness. in any case, find a way to reduce the number of frames as much as possible while reducing the smoothness as little as possible, or don't use such moves as avatars at all.

If it is impossible to tinker with it enough to make it below the limit, then you should just give up on that and not try to bend the site to fit your own preferences or desires.
This is the size limit of files on the Bulbagarden Archives, for use on Bulbapedia we're talking about. It has nothing to do with forum avatars whatsoever.
 
Please note: The thread is from 13 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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