Apps not animating GIFs

[BlivetWidget]

Platform: Android, iphone

App version number: Android 1.20.35 (466), iOS 3.0.6 b610

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68137111 6
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68134878 2

Description of problem: I can view the animated GIFs fine through a browser on PC, Android, and iPhone. However, the animated GIFs display as static images using the iNaturalist app on both Android and iPhone.

[kueda]

At some point in the future we'd like to convert all photos to JPGs, so more / better animated GIF support is not in the cards, I'm afraid.

[BlivetWidget]

@kueda out of curiosity, what is the rationale behind that decision? Microbial identifications can sometimes hinge on observing the movement. The workaround is obvious and easy (use the website instead of the app), it just seems like a strange decision (and begs the question of why have an app less featureful than the existing site).

[kueda]

The goal is to remove animated GIFs across the system. The reason, in addition to the fact that they are an extremely annoying hack around the fact that we don't support video at present, is that it makes our photos a lot easier to manage if we only have a single file format, e.g. if we're doing something like training our vision model we don't have to add a check to make absolutely sure the file format is what we think it is and perform a conversion if not. If we want to support moving images, we should support actual video file formats. For the record, I'd love to do that, but it's a heavy (and potential expensive) lift.

[BlivetWidget]

Indeed, I think for most non-microbial life there's not much argument for it. The other hackish workaround is to host the material on another site (youtube or somesuch) and link it, but for the moment gif uploads are a better experience.

I would vote for png myself (lossless), but of course that makes them necessarily larger.