Author Topic: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?  (Read 4236 times)

Offline Amechra

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Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« on: January 31, 2013, 03:43:16 AM »
I'm kinda curious... I mean, I found one that's 8 minutes long, and I'm kinda curious whether or not there's a longer one.

Oh, and looping GIFs don't count.
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Offline veekie

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Re: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2013, 04:48:04 AM »
Depends on the size really, GIFs are really inefficient for animation, so while I COULD make an hour long video into one, it'd rapidly crush the viewer trying to display it. So length is dependent upon the display-side's capacity, along with size and color depth.


I think a 1 pixel morse pattern should be able to go on for more than a day though.
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Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2013, 04:17:59 PM »
*Scratches chin*

Well you'd have a limitation of the amount of continuous memory. As by default 99.9% of gif reading programs just front load the frames all at once which has to be a continuous stream of data. However, if you wrote your own reader that reads the frame from the data source and then deletes the frame from memory then your limitation becomes based on your data storage.

Using the 1x1 pixel concept, each frame is exactly one byte. Excluding gif header information which is rather small, you could store 1,099,511,627,776 frames per terrabyte of stored data. At a rate of ten frames per second that comes out to a little over 3,486 years.

However, looping becomes an issue. Only 256 colors exist in a gif, or on your 127th frame you have shown the same exact image more than once which kind of invalidates your no loop limitation. However, if you make it the image display five pixels then the total possible unique frames increases to that exact 1,099,511,627,776 number. Except now your duration is reduces to one fifth. To an almost 700 years per spare HD you have laying around.

Then of course, since the pattern is is rather simplistic. - Count form 0 to 255, expand size - You could in fact write a program to mathematically calculate the next frame per gif standards. By the time you have a 5x5 image you have 4.113761393303015e+62 unique frames and I'm not even sure what that means. Can we just call it infinite?

Does that help answer your question?
« Last Edit: February 09, 2013, 04:25:31 PM by SorO_Lost »

Offline Amechra

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Re: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« Reply #3 on: February 09, 2013, 04:24:51 PM »
I now need to write the software, thanks!

Though, to ask a different aspect of the question...

What is the longest GIF that you've seen that isn't just a set of pixels splashed on there? You know, an animation with a plot.

Because that is probably a more reachable goal  :P.
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Offline Garryl

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Re: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« Reply #4 on: February 09, 2013, 04:25:53 PM »
If you make the colors a function of an irrational number, you should be able to get around the no loop limitation even on a single pixel. Looping is not the same as repeating.

Offline Amechra

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Re: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« Reply #5 on: February 09, 2013, 04:28:36 PM »
I now need to make a looping GIF based off of euler's number.

Because I like it more than pi.
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Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« Reply #6 on: February 09, 2013, 04:35:45 PM »
If you're serious on the program. I have a bitmap array save to single gif file method written in C# at home that I can post when I get home (either late tonight or tomorrow). It's actually a pretty easy format. Something like a couple of bytes that spells out 'Netscape 2.0' (yeah, seriously) along with height/width, the frame count, then the image loop which just contains the stream of bytes for color.

Offline Amechra

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Re: Does anyone know what the record for longest GIF is?
« Reply #7 on: February 09, 2013, 05:38:34 PM »
I don't speak C# yet; I'll see if I can figure out what's happening so that I can get that into Java or Python.
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