Limitation of the GIF format or WE?

[butcho]

Hi,

recently i started to use some animated gifs in scene wallpapers to put a little more life in it. So i did some tests and noticed that everytime i imported an animated gif that exceeds the resolution of 1024 pixel (no matter in which direction) WE crashes or tells me that there is an error.
So my general question is: is that a Wallpaper Engine limitation / bug or a limitation in the GIF file format itself?

My first guess is that it´s the GIF format...it has some other limits like only 500 frames in one file. Wouldn´t be surprised if the resolution is also limited which brings me to another question: how about importing video files with an alpha channel like QuickTime or just PNG sequences?

[Biohazard]

It runs out of memory, yeah. There is no good way to display such a GIF, the format wasn't really designed for this. It's either going to use too much memory or too much processing power to continuously display something like that, so for such a GIF, using a video format is just better all the way.

But you can't mix it with scenes then of course, which is probably what you wanted to do. A PNG sequence will just have the same issues eventually, it would be way too many textures to load (GBs of VRAM necessary).

[butcho]

Ok...thanks for your answer. I decided to use a lower resolution for the gifs and just scale it up a little bit in WE. Not exactly a "clean" solution but it works and i really like this little animated stuff in the scene wallpapers so i stick to the low res gifs.

[Biohazard]

Also check if you want to disable the 'point filter' option on the GIF, I could imagine in your case you don't want it. It's only enabled by default since it looks good on typical GIFs.

Some other advanced thing you could check out try is changing the format to DXT5, it would use a quarter of texture memory then, allowing you display larger GIFs that need less VRAM. It looks usually bad with point filter enabled though and takes a lot of time to compile depending on the file.

[butcho]

Cool, gonna check that out and see if it works. Thnx ^^

[butcho]

Now i got a GIF that WE just don´t want to import. I press the OK button (DXT 5) and WE starts working for about 20 minutes and after that nothing happens except the OK button turning clickable again. No error message or crash. Is there a logfile somewhere to take a look what went wrong?

Tried it with a new empty project but no luck. :-/

[Biohazard]

This log probably: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\bin\log.txt does it say anything at the end that seems relevant?

[butcho]

Most entries in the log file are something like this:

2018-04-27T08:53:03Z: NVAPI init: Error
2018-04-27T08:53:03Z: QDC paths 1, modes 2, query 2, method 0
2018-04-27T08:53:03Z: QDC Monitor path 0. Source name \\.\DISPLAY4, target name \\?\DISPLAY#ACR00D3#5&3b5d942a&0&UID521#{e6f07b5f-ee97-4a90-b076-33f57bf4eaa7}, adapter name \\?\PCI#VEN_1002&DEV_6798&SUBSYS_30011682&REV_00#4&28cd24b9&0&0008#{5b45201d-f2f2-4f3b-85bb-30ff1f953599}. Source mode 1 / 0, target mode 0
2018-04-27T08:53:03Z: QDC path 0 DISPLAYCONFIG_SOURCE_MODE flags 1 (virtual mode 0, source index 1) position 0 0 width 1920 height 1080 rotation 1

But i guess it has something to do with the length of the GIF. Cuted out 400 frames and suddenly the import works.

[Biohazard]

Yeah, maybe it was silently running out of memory and wherever that was, there was no error being reported.

If it runs out of memory it could be anywhere in the middle of the process.

[butcho]

Ok...so i guess i´ll have to use smaller GIFs.

But thanks for your help, Biohazard.

[butcho]

Mmmh...i tested gif import some more and this is what happened: for every GIF i cannot import WE shows "No Preview" on the first import screen. That happens only when the first frame of the gif is a completely transparent frame. So here´s the strange part: i cut out the first transparent frame in the gif, save it, import it and WE shows the new frame 1 in the preview window although it is also completely transparent. The text "No Preview" in the preview window is gone although the frame is the same as the one i removed, completely transparent.

In case my explanation is not that clear here´s the short version

Frame 1, transparent --> No Preview-Text in the Preview Window, import doesn´t work
cut out frame 1, the new frame 1 also completely transparent --> No Preview-Text is gone. import works

Man, this gif ♥♥♥♥ is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with my brain.

[butcho]

At least now i have a preview window-indicator that tells me the import works or not, saves some time to know that it will not work before clicking "OK" and wait 10-20 mins only to see the OK button turning clickable again. ^^

[Biohazard]

Weird, I think that could indicate a failure in the image import library that is used for that preview there and also the conversion for textures.

The GIFs I have seem to show up as a preview indeed, only the first frame since I just made it open and convert that, but at least it returns something there.

[butcho]

Would it be helpful to send you a GIF that i cannot import?
I´m also good with just cutting the first frame. No problem. Guess you have more important things to do to get WE out of early access. ^^

[Biohazard]

I could check if the importer is really just failing, but probably couldn't do much about it now. Do you have a small GIF with this transparent frame issue you could share?

[butcho]

Of course. I´ll send it to your WE gmail adress if that´s ok?