Issues with GIFs

B
Userlevel 2

Short version:

Lots of issues with GIFs. Have witnessed many GIF related changes over the past months that are dramatically affecting my teams experience with Miro as a tool.

Long Version:

I’m an art lead on a game development team. We are using Miro to share and review animation. Due to various quirks with embedding video we’ve been using gifs for the past year+ in Miro - they allow you the easiest method to 1. swiftly drag/drop an image on a board, 2. view a short clip of animation while staying in the board (not having to navigate away). 3. See a reference image, so at glance you know what you are about to watch. 4. Being able to view two animations side by side for contrast/comparison/critique. 

Over the past couple months we’ve seen pretty dramatic changes to how gifs are handled. Its been frustrating.  

  • GIF size limitation dropped to 5mb which broke entire boards and prevented review sessions (only to notice this had changed a few weeks later after we had dramatically tried to downsize all our GIFs). 
  • GIFs switching from a clear intuitive “play” button to needing to unintuitively mouse over a “gif” icon (very recent). 
  • GIFs playing at a much slower rate and/or appearing to drop frames (very recent). 

As a team this has forced us to delay and/or reconfigure our review process. It has raised the question whether we are the intended use case for your product - and potentially seeking alternatives. At very least would love some clear messaging what’s happening and where things are going. 

We’re on Windows 11, Mostly Chrome but seeing it everywhere across multiple users. We are subscribers. 

15 replies

D

This exactly ^.  
I’m also an art lead at a game dev studio.  We set up a couple Miro pages full of GIF examples of various animations, etc.  Before, it was an easy way to demonstrate something.  Now they all try to play automatically, with no visible option to stop them, and it slows our framerate to a crawl.  Sometimes Miro blanks out altogether.
I’m wondering why the ability to Stop and Play individual GIFs, as I could in the past, was removed?  There should be an option at the very least to shut off all GIFs to help performance.
If not, Miro’s usefulness plummets considerably in this regard.

J

Also here because of this ^.
Art lead, game dev studio. Same story as the guy above.

K

Impacted by this also, Windows 11, Firefox.

T

Very impacted by that, Art Director here, using Chrome currently on win11

M

Short version:

Lots of issues with GIFs. Have witnessed many GIF related changes over the past months that are dramatically affecting my teams experience with Miro as a tool.

Long Version:

I’m an art lead on a game development team. We are using Miro to share and review animation. Due to various quirks with embedding video we’ve been using gifs for the past year+ in Miro - they allow you the easiest method to 1. swiftly drag/drop an image on a board, 2. view a short clip of animation while staying in the board (not having to navigate away). 3. See a reference image, so at glance you know what you are about to watch. 4. Being able to view two animations side by side for contrast/comparison/critique. 

Over the past couple months we’ve seen pretty dramatic changes to how gifs are handled. Its been frustrating.  

  • GIF size limitation dropped to 5mb which broke entire boards and prevented review sessions (only to notice this had changed a few weeks later after we had dramatically tried to downsize all our GIFs). 
  • GIFs switching from a clear intuitive “play” button to needing to unintuitively mouse over a “gif” icon (very recent). 
  • GIFs playing at a much slower rate and/or appearing to drop frames (very recent). 

As a team this has forced us to delay and/or reconfigure our review process. It has raised the question whether we are the intended use case for your product - and potentially seeking alternatives. At very least would love some clear messaging what’s happening and where things are going. 

We’re on Windows 11, Mostly Chrome but seeing it everywhere across multiple users. We are subscribers. 

I empathize with the challenges you have encountered, and it’s essential for a collaborative tool like Miro to provide a smooth and efficient experience for its users. Exploring alternative tools that better meet your team’s requirements may be a viable option. 

R

Same here, Art Director, using miro boards for reviewing, especially side-by-side GIFs were always super practical. Now I actually can’t even find a way to play the GIFs at all… 

David Grabner
Rank
Userlevel 3

@Ruben.Ahlers I send you a DM to better understand the challenges with playing GIFs. 

David Grabner
Rank
Userlevel 3

Hi @BartK and community members,  

 David from Miro here. I appreciate the feedback and we want to make sure to deliver an amazing experience for creators such as everyone on this thread.

I apologize for the size restriction issue you faced and the drop in frame rate you experienced. We addressed these temporary issues and hope that you no longer experience these. 

With your help, I would like to understand what quirks you encountered with embedding videos in Miro and why they are not an option for your content review in Miro.

Also wanted to understand how playing GIFs upon hover has worked for you and what challenges you encountered.

Thanks you, 
David

M

Is there a way to NOT have a GIF loop. I have a GIF that should just play once, but it loops like 5 times then stops at almost the beginning.

David Grabner
Rank
Userlevel 3

Hi @Mark Anthony can you share in what context you want the GIF to only play one loop? Depending on the length of the GIF it should only play one loop or max 8 seconds if it’s shorter. Thanks

M

I have very short logo intro animation, only 1.5 secs long. Final will probably be about three when finished.

In Miro, The current one plays over and over like 4-5 times.

It’s odd that Miro would play a GIF for a minimum of 8 seconds since accessibility req’ is max 5 seconds. So a lot of what I make now tries to be under 5 seconds.

I want it to just play once on click (or loop if it actually is a looping GIF — thought that was how it worked before), to show concept to stake holders.

David Grabner
Rank
Userlevel 3

This is very insightful @Mark Anthony. We will collect more feedback from users as well and then come back to this group on small iterations we plan to make. 

B

Seems gifs arent looping at all anymore?  We are dealing with short 3d character animations that we need to review/critique (run cycles, walk cycles etc) - and that need to loop so we can observe the cycle. Looping gifs are ideal for this - as thats what they are built to do (and what has worked in the past in miro).  But now i  (or anyone else viewing a board) needs to hit the play button repeatedly. 

So this is what the experience is like. A board has 20-30 gifs for review. Each is one second long, give or take. People are click click clicking incessantly to view the content. In the case of gifs where a loop is necessary (runs walks etc) it completely breaks the experience. 

I respect what Mark (above) suggested (not having gifs loop). But if that is whhat was implemented as a universal solution - then while that may work for his case... it certainly doesnt work for mine. Some gifs are designed to loop, some are not. Can the system be designed such that it detects which type of gif it is? If its a “looper” type, let it roll for 10 seconds.

Even better…  leave it up to the user. Just as you have a little play button in the left corner, have a little “infinity” symble in the right corner that allows the gif to continue looping for a bit. 

I guess I’m confused by this. The primary purpose of a gif (for most common instances of content consumption) is seeing it repeatedly cycle (at least for a few loops). This was working previously not sure why it was entirely removed. 

David Grabner
Rank
Userlevel 3

Hi @BKaufman 
can you check if you have the reduced motion setting enabled https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/7812052691602 ? 

If you disable reduced motion you will see GIFs play for individual users for 8 seconds or one loop. https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018109574-Work-smarter-not-harder#Adding_GIFs

If that is not the case please send me a DM or submit a ticket to our customer support team. Thank you

B

I did as you said (turn off reduce motion) and its really fiddly.

 

I mouse over the gif which activates it. Sometimes it plays once. Sometimes it will loop a couple times then stop. Sometimes more. It seems the behavior may be dependent on the mouse being over the gif - and it continues to loop? It feels very arbitrary.  But then how do you “play” multiples gifs side by side so you can compare them if it depends on your mouse being over the image - not to mention with your mouse curser sitting directly on the image it’s just bad UX if you’re trying to observe something for review purposes (as its now obscured by an arrow icon.)

 

The mousing over a gif functionality feels very floaty and unintentional to me too. Feels like I’m unintentionally/accidentally causing something to play. Then i have to mouse off and back on to cause it to restart? Which is a more complex, and unintuitive gesture then just clicking a second time (clicking being both easier AND a gesture people associate with intentionally “triggering” an event.)

 

I dont know. If the underlying issue here is that miro boards are getting all crowded with gifs and people don’t get that gifs/motion are memory intensive and performance/resources are finite - can’t you just own that and build a more elegant UX around that? Maybe have the ability to create a collection of gifs. Then have a little “memory bar” that sits above the group which lets the user know “yo...this group of gifs is approaching its memory-max and you can only have one group active/playing at a time!!”  Maybe a play button that is associated with that bucket of gifs which plays them all at once. If you play another group it automatically shuts down the first gif-group. 

 

Whatever the case...not loving the current implementation. Feels arbitrary and imprecise. Between the floaty mousing and the arbitrary playing time it feels like I’m not in control of anything. 

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