Ubuntu – Fix animated GIF images which eog can’t open, but Firefox and ImageMagick can

convert-commandeoggifimage processingimagemagick

I received a collection of animated GIF images from a friend, but I am unable to open some of them them with the standard image viewer eog.

The error messages showing up when trying to open them include:

GIF image loader cannot understand this image
Circular table entry in GIF file
Stack overflow

However, the images are not corrupt, because I can open them with Firefox without problems, also with the ImageMagick viewer, which does not play the animation automatically though.

Examining the GIFs with file returns the output below, both for the images I can and cannot open (varying sizes though):

GIF image data, version 89a, 400 x 300

I want to be able to open all these images in eog. Can I somehow "fix" the "broken" images to make them readable for the standard image viewer, e.g. by using ImageMagick's conversion abilities to turn them into something else and back?

Best Answer

Usually when some program can't open certain GIFs it's because of optimization used for this image.

You can try running ImageMagick with the -coalesce option. This will redraw each frame with all the details from previous frames. This will increase file size, but undo complex frame optimizations.

convert original.gif -coalesce unoptimized.gif

If this doesn't help, please provide a sample GIF with this problem.

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Ubuntu – EOG (Image Viewer) fails to open gif files with incorrect png extension – how can I solve this

If you use (from command line or within a script... if you need the script just ask ;) ) the command file thisimage.png, it will tell you what image format you actually have.... Then you can rename accordingly...

This is a sample of what I get with a file with incorrect file extension .png which is really a jpg file:

user@computer:$ file logo.png
logo.png: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01

Edit: Oh, ok, I was lazy before... Here's an script that will rename actual gif files that are named with .png extension to their correct extension .gif:

#!/bin/bash
for NAME in $(ls *.png); do

if [ "$(file $NAME|grep GIF)" ]; then

echo "Renaming ${NAME} to ${NAME%.*}.gif"
mv ${NAME} ${NAME%.*}.gif

fi

done

Ubuntu – feh alternative that animates .gif files

Try sxiv with the -animate flag.

sxiv -a

Simple X Image Viewer

The primary goal of sxiv is to create an image viewer, which only has the most basic features required for fast image viewing (the ones I want). It has vi key bindings and works nicely with tiling window managers. Its code base should be kept small and clean to make it easy for you to dig into it and customize it for your needs.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – EOG (Image Viewer) fails to open gif files with incorrect png extension – how can I solve this

Ubuntu – feh alternative that animates .gif files

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