GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log - Printable Version
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+----- Thread: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log (/showthread.php?tid=94008)
GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by Shahrose Khan on 03-03-2010 at 07:38 PM
As far as I remember Messenger Plus! used to save gif emoticons, and whenever I opened chat log/history they were animating... but that doesn't happen anymore... and the folder in which the emoticons are usually saved still has the emoticons, but each frame has been saved separately with 'PNG' format instead of GIF... that's why the emoticons are not animating when history/chat log is viewed... is there a way to solve this problem and recover the emoticons as animating GIFs?
I viewed the chat logs both manually and through the messenger... tried more than 1 browser to open the html chat log too
another minor problem that recently occurred is that my event log has disappeared and doesn't appear no matter how many times I disable and enable it as well as restart msn messenger.
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by matty on 03-03-2010 at 07:53 PM
No, unfortunately Messenger Plus! Live has never supported saving of animated emoticons in the chat logs.
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by Shahrose Khan on 03-03-2010 at 08:14 PM
oh ok... much thanks for informing me
perhaps there must be a way to combine those PNGs...
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by CookieRevised on 03-04-2010 at 09:16 AM
There is nothing to combine. Emoticons are saved as a PNG, which does not have all the frames of the animation, only the first frame.
The different PNGs you'll see in the images subdirectory are all from different emoticons, they are not frames from a single animated emoticon. You can easily see this if you browse that folder with Windows Explorer and view the folder with 'thumbnails view' on.
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by Shahrose Khan on 03-04-2010 at 06:43 PM
I already browsed through those folders and I'm sure all frames of the emoticons are present that's why I suggested putting them together in the first place... it might be too much trouble, but some emoticons I had were pretty rare
so if its a common thing to switch from gif to png and vice versa for whatever the reasons, then I think there must be a software out there which should be able to do it fast
I just found one such software... I hope its not fake
http://www.reasoft.com/rea-png-change-gif.shtml
another the task of manually putting the png images in order remains...
I just hope quality is not lost at the end!
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by CookieRevised on 03-05-2010 at 02:19 PM
quote:I'm afraid you're mistaken though, because Like I said before, individual frames are not saved.
Originally posted by Shahrose Khan
I already browsed through those folders and I'm sure all frames of the emoticons are present that's why I suggested putting them together in the first place...
Messenger Plus! saves emoticons (or, for that matter, any other graphic encountered in a chat, like winks, handwritten messages, etc) as PNGs, hence only
It makes not much sense for Plus! to save all the frames seperatly either by the way, especially not when it wouldn't automatically combine them again. Because what would be the point of saving them then? If it was saving emoticons with all their frames, it would do it directly in GIF, not as individual PNGs.
RE: RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by pollolibredegrasa on 03-05-2010 at 02:44 PM
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
I'm afraid you're mistaken though, because Like I said before, individual frames are not saved.
Messenger Plus! saves emoticons (or, for that matter, any other graphic encountered in a chat, like winks, handwritten messages, etc) as PNGs, hence only the first frame is saved.
I hate to disagree Cookie, but that seems not to be the case...not exactly anyway
. From my observations, one frame of the gif gets saved as a PNG when the log gets written, however which frame this is seems to differ a large amount of the time (saved frame is the one visible in the window perhaps? I'm not sure...)Thus if you use the same emoticon a few times, eventually you most likely will end up having all the frames saved as PNGs and can therefore recreate it in gif form
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by gif83 on 03-05-2010 at 02:47 PM
Though the chat log only captures only one frame of the animated GIF, it would appear as if it does not necessarily capture the first frame.
There is also no way of determining how many frames exist within the original GIF nor what order the frames belong. So although you may have many frames captured as PNGs. Pasting them back together in the right order may be an arduous task.
As CookieRevised stated, Messenger Plus! saves emoticons only as PNGs in chat logs. So unless you are desperate to use a particular emoticon and have no way of retrieving it from the original source, it is quite pointless considering putting them together from separate PNGs aquired.
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by CookieRevised on 03-05-2010 at 02:56 PM
ah, yes, very true... it's not the first frame but the frame visible at the moment the chatlog is saved on disk which gets saved as a (one frame) PNG.
But indeed:
quote:Not to mention that transparency is completely lost, as well as the original frame and palette compression which is often used in (good made) animated GIFs.
Originally posted by gif83
There is also no way of determining how many frames exist within the original GIF nor what order the frames belong. So although you may have many frames captured as PNGs. Pasting them back together in the right order may be an arduous task.
Although frame and palette compression can be redone by using decent GIF animators (like the supurb Gif Construction Set Pro). But reconstructing the original transparency from those individual PNGs is another matter. For many this is not possible anymore as that information is lost.
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by Shahrose Khan on 03-05-2010 at 06:02 PM
Thanks for the input everyone... I agree that few frames seem to be missing... if that wasn't enough, there was a still smiley that I wanted to revive... but every time I add it to the messenger, it appears TINY unlike how it used to appear and how it appears in my chat log... I changed the format to jpg, bmi, gif, etc etc nothing helped...
I guess there is still a lot of work to be done before we can have a messenger with animating smileys in chat logs
RE: RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by Ming on 04-19-2010 at 06:25 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Shahrose Khan
I guess there is still a lot of work to be done before we can have a messenger with animating smileys in chat logs
I dont think so. If this feature is not enabled is just because developers are not interested in it.
Saving animated gif emoticons as static png is actually more complicated than to just save the gif emoticons unchanged (animated).
Think about your IM client as an Internet browser. As you know, everything that is displayed on your screen is there because it has been downloaded from a server, and thus it can be saved.
Other IM clients are saving animated gif emoticons in their logs, though not perfectly yet. Check emesene.org or miranda-im.org. They are open source and more importantly, they can be portable, which is something Messeger Plus so far can't.
So the question is, are the developers going to leak some trick about how to save animated emoticons in logs, or are they waiting to see how a bunch of users lswitch to other options like emesene, Miranda...?
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by matty on 04-19-2010 at 06:39 PM
quote:Good job in comparing apples to oranges. Plus! isn't a stand alone replacement like others are. Plus! is an addon and requires Windows Live Messenger to operate.
Originally posted by Ming
Other IM clients are saving animated gif emoticons in their logs, though not perfectly yet. Check emesene.org or miranda-im.org. They are open source and more importantly, they can be portable, which is something Messeger Plus so far can't."
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by prashker on 04-19-2010 at 10:00 PM
Skipping through most of this topic, couldn't MP!L just do /noicon, find that there's an emoticon, and when saving it in the log, use an animated version included in WLM?
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by CookieRevised on 04-20-2010 at 02:12 AM
quote:This is not how Plus! works.
Originally posted by Ming
quote:
Originally posted by Shahrose Khan
I guess there is still a lot of work to be done before we can have a messenger with animating smileys in chat logs
I dont think so. If this feature is not enabled is just because developers are not interested in it.
Saving animated gif emoticons as static png is actually more complicated than to just save the gif emoticons unchanged (animated).
Plus! gets the graphical data from certain internal objects in Messenger. And those objects probably only provide a static image (also reason why winks are saved as PNG and not as Flash files for example)
quote:This is not how Messenger works. What you see on the screen is not necessarily the same as what is provided by the internal accessable objects.
Originally posted by Ming
Think about your IM client as an Internet browser. As you know, everything that is displayed on your screen is there because it has been downloaded from a server, and thus it can be saved.
quote:They also work in a completely different way which can not be compared to how Plus! works.
Originally posted by Ming
Other IM clients are saving animated gif emoticons in their logs, though not perfectly yet. Check emesene.org or miranda-im.org.
Those 3rd party clients are just that: "clients". Meaning they must interact with the Messenger protocol directly. Messenger Plus! is NOT a client, it is an addon, meaning it can only work with what Messenger provides via its internal objects.
RE: GIF emoticons don't animate in Chat Log by Ming on 04-20-2010 at 02:02 PM
Ok, thank you guys for getting me out of my own misconceptions.
I have not idea about all this.
M$ may not be very helpful in providing details on how its application work, right?
I came back from a long break without using MSN and expected that saving animated gif had already been implemented long time ago... so maybe I got a bit frustrated and impatient. Sorry about that
I tried Miranda further. Miranda does not even let you send custom emoticons, and this feature will never be implemented as stated by one of the Mirada "Grand Master" members. (http://forums.miranda-im.org/showthread.php?13022-illegal-plugin-for-customize-emoticons-into-msn)
So, MP!L seems to be the best option... and all my hopes goes with it.
Thanks