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Ability to save gifs as .gif

Open chriseilander opened this issue 8 years ago • 63 comments

Great that Telegram now turns gifs in mp4's, they load faster. I really wished I could still save the original .gif though... Me and my friends loved to save them to our shared dropbox for easy use (even outside of Telegram).

chriseilander avatar Jan 08 '16 14:01 chriseilander

@chriseilander Server does not save original gifs at all. Perhaps there could be a converter from mp4 to gif added to Telegram Desktop, but I don't think this will be done soon.

telegramdesktop avatar Jan 08 '16 15:01 telegramdesktop

Probably best to save the originals instead of converting back — though that might use a lot of space, not sure.

ralesk avatar Jan 11 '16 09:01 ralesk

@ralesk The originals are not saved on the server, only the .mp4

telegramdesktop avatar Jan 11 '16 09:01 telegramdesktop

I read that, yes :) My comment says that maybe they should be, rather than to convert back on request.

ralesk avatar Jan 11 '16 09:01 ralesk

Converting back on request would be great. Now, when I right click on a "used to be gif but now mp4" it has an option saying "Save GIF" but as far as I know this doesn't do anything.

[edit] I see they are now saved in the same place as emoji but since they aren't GIF's anymore, isn't this the wrong name for it?

chriseilander avatar Jan 20 '16 13:01 chriseilander

@chriseilander It saves gif to a separate tab in stickers panel.

telegramdesktop avatar Jan 20 '16 13:01 telegramdesktop

I also find this useful. Converting to MP4 makes the file great for in-app playback, but you should have the option to "export" it back to GIF to save it locally and share it to other apps. This could maybe be implemented by using an external tool like giflayer.com or similar.

mathifonseca avatar Mar 24 '16 18:03 mathifonseca

I came now to suggest a feature request about mp4 converter to gif, and I found this thread. So it would be great if you can add this converter. Because we want to save a lot of gifs but they are all in mp4. Thanks :)

amiremami avatar Apr 22 '16 22:04 amiremami

Telegram has beautiful bot platform for things like this one.

stek29 avatar Apr 27 '16 09:04 stek29

what is the difference between sending gif as file and as photo ? i tried both and got same result (coverted to mp4) send as file should send original file format.

but, i think download as gif from mp4 is very cool

ucay avatar May 04 '16 09:05 ucay

@stek29 So I would send a .gif, telegram converts it to .mp4, and a bot would convert it back to .gif. Not really a good way to do things.

As @ucay suggested a way of sending the file should also matter. If I would send as a file it shouldn't change the fileformat. Or at least let us choose just like with photo's. I would be happy either way.

chriseilander avatar May 09 '16 07:05 chriseilander

I'd really love to be able to save my gifs as, well, gifs. Or at least have a bot to convert them. Sometimes I find I'd like to use on other social networks one of my telegram gifs, and I just can't.

ccrowles avatar Jul 09 '16 18:07 ccrowles

+1, I want to export my gifs as gifs!

Cassolotl avatar Aug 15 '16 13:08 Cassolotl

Even if we can't save GIFs as GIFs, I have two things to note:

  • The "Save GIF" menu option should at least be renamed to something more obvious, such as "Save GIF to Stickers"
  • On OS X, the file chooser still uses the .gif extension for the default filename, causing OS X to give a warning about incompatible file extensions; perhaps the file chooser should use a .mp4 extension for the default filename instead

This might at least make things less confusing.

andlabs avatar Oct 03 '16 14:10 andlabs

I ended up here because on Desktop there is an option called "Save GIF"

It does nothing.

Draco18s avatar Oct 25 '16 14:10 Draco18s

@Draco18s It saves gifs to a saved gifs tab in stickers panel.

john-preston avatar Oct 25 '16 14:10 john-preston

@john-preston Ah, there they are. I even went looking for them when I saw the note to change the text to "save to stickers" and still couldn't find them. Rather than being where I expected (in the stickers list) it was in a semi-hidden "category" off where I'd mentally ignored the UI (because I give no foxes about popular sticker packs) that isn't accessible by scrolling.

Draco18s avatar Oct 25 '16 15:10 Draco18s

So will there ever be a function to save / download gifs as gifs on your file system and not to the gif tab in the sticker panel?

Nachtalb avatar Oct 15 '17 20:10 Nachtalb

To everyone who is in favour of this feature request: Why do you want .gif files? They are the same as .mp4, but much bigger, because .gif wasn't developed as a video format. What advantage is there in having a .gif file compared to .mp4?

Fabian42 avatar Dec 26 '18 12:12 Fabian42

@Fabian42

What advantage is there in having a .gif file compared to .mp4?

In my opinion it was a good choice of Telegram to use MP4's instead of GIFs. Because as you said it greatly decreases the file size, because not every frame is saved as an own image. But there is the problem. MP4s have more logic than GIFs behind them, which means GIFs are easier to display. That's why GIFs are much more common to be used on bulletin boards and other pages like 4chan. So it would be nice that we are able to save them as GIFs.

One further use case of GIFs is reverse search. You can't use most of reverse image search engines with videos. But almost all accept GIFs. Examples: Google, Yandex, Bing & IQDB

And for a more advanced use case. It is much easier (and faster) to edit or extract information of a GIF compared to other formats. Due to it being just a bunch of images in a sequence.

PS: even though I think it is a good way to use MP4s instead of GIFs in Telegram itself. The naming is to some extent misleading, because they are not actual GIFs.

Nachtalb avatar Dec 26 '18 13:12 Nachtalb

What Nachtlab said.

Not to mention that if I save the file locally and try and open it, Windows opens mp4 as a video file (which does not loop automatically and I would not want my video player to remember to always loop due to other content that I would want to watch) while gifs open in the Photo Viewer (the same program every other image I view opens in) and loops automatically every time.

Also, Telegram is the only application that will embed and play an mp4 when it is posted. No other messaging or forum does this. Discord does not play mp4, no forum will let you use an img tag to link to an mp4, and you can't upload them to most image hosting websites (imgur I think is the only one).

Yes, the file size is smaller, and its fine for Telegram to use this format itself, but it's a right pain in the ass do deal with when trying to share it anywhere else.

Draco18s avatar Dec 26 '18 14:12 Draco18s

Like some other people say, mp4's are still recognized as mostly an video format, and because of that terrible to use anywhere else.

Even just opening a mp4 on your computer often fires up a big and slow mediaplayer, for just playing a 2 second video.

So an option to locally convert an mp4 to gif when wanting to save an animation would be great.

chriseilander avatar Feb 03 '19 21:02 chriseilander

This is great and would be awesome. Is there any plan to do apply this functionality?

waytootangled avatar May 03 '19 15:05 waytootangled

https://t.me/gif_export_bot should do just that ~~Because of a restriction that all .gif files are automatically converted to .mp4s, the resulting file will have a .gif_ file ending. Currently working on a fix.~~ Bot now offers URLs to download the file from, with a .gif ending. Storage is done entirely via telegram, so it's not a big deal for me.

mkg20001 avatar Jun 21 '19 04:06 mkg20001

Hi, I was wondering if you could add this feature in Advanced -> Export Telegram data. Although I don't mind it's GIF or GIFV, I would be grateful for exporting all my GIFs stuck in Telegram.

BasixKOR avatar Jul 16 '19 00:07 BasixKOR

@BasixKOR

mind it's GIF or GIFV

GIFV is nothing but an MP4 or WEBM with a different extension name to inform the client it should be looped like a GIF so it wouldn't make much sense to save it as a GIFV. If you want a GIFV you can just use the normal MP4 that is downloaded and add .gifv.

But I don't think you should use it anyways because it is not widely used nor supported

Nachtalb avatar Jul 25 '19 09:07 Nachtalb

who is this and why am I getting these messages? Please stop.

On Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 5:02 AM Nicku [email protected] wrote:

@BasixKOR https://github.com/BasixKOR

mind it's GIF or GIFV GIFV is nothing but an MP4 or WEBM with a different extension name to inform the client it should be looped like a GIF so it wouldn't make much sense to save it as a GIFV. If you want a GIFV you can just use the normal MP4 that is downloaded and add .gifv.

But I don't think you should use it anyways because it is not widely used nor supported

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waytootangled avatar Jul 25 '19 13:07 waytootangled

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RememberTheAir avatar Jul 25 '19 13:07 RememberTheAir

For opening files on computer maybe it could be saved with m4v extension by default instead of mp4 that should be reserved only for videos. The extension m4v is rather rarely used, so it can be associated with another application than video player like IrfanView. It for sure doesn't solve all problems, but would make it more comfortable to use on computers.

maxoku avatar Jan 01 '20 16:01 maxoku

Since the desktop client already links to FFMPEG, maybe allowing user to save MP4ed gifs as real gifs by adding a new filter (*.gif) in the Save File As dialog and doing convertion in the background is doable.

mzji avatar Feb 22 '20 10:02 mzji