We have recently been doing some work to how we deliver thumbnail images which should, overall, greatly improve the reliability of thumbnail loading and the site in general. We moved the resizing of thumbnail images into the cloud, freeing up many resources for the rest of the site.

One consequence is that we now resize gifs, which previously were delivered in their full size rather than in the size they appear on our various pages. Resizing makes the thumbnails use less data when downloading them but has lead to some users seeing the gifs as blurry. However, the overall benefits to how we deliver the thumbnails are well worth it.

-Scratch Team

I don’t want to sound ungrateful because it’s always good to get the information from a developer, but, a lot of people have been posting topics asking about this change. So, I just want to suggest that your change control process include a step to make an announcement before a widely visible change is made.

Will the GIF quality improve soon?

New Sticky? U v U! New STICK!!

panda-wat wrote:

Will the GIF quality improve soon?

probably

-ElectronicArts- wrote:

panda-wat wrote:

Will the GIF quality improve soon?

probably

It's a good idea to give a source for information that you are distributing. That way others can decide how likely it is to be accurate.

It would be great if there was a follow up from the developers about this change event and maybe one of them could speak to these two questions.

Are there any plans to reprocess the current set of Gifs on the website to improve their image quality?

Are there any plans to improve the image processing that would allow Gifs uploaded in the future to have better quality?

Is cdn(2) getting removed?

han614698 wrote:

Is cdn(2) getting removed?

is uploads getting removed? the uploads pages all lead to a 404 (except images)

I posted a question on the profile of the Scratch Team member who has been answering people’s questions about this change. To be respectful of his time I just asked one question. I believe that it is okay to quote is response here.

I asked “Is it a planned part of this current change event to improve the quality of the GIFS that people now see."

Codubee* wrote:

We did not anticipate some of the side effects that have been occurring, because those side effects did not show up in our testing samples. This is why the team decided that an announcement should be made to the wider community. The quality issues with some images will be addressed. However, we never handled GIFs the same way we handled PNG and JPGs. We will be resizing GIFs from now on, so some change to how they look is inevitable. However, the older way was not supportable and we cannot go back to the old way. From Dec 24→Jan 03 are our holidays, and so no changes will be happening until early in January.”

https://scratch.mit.edu/users/codubee/#comments-177529236

So the quality of GIF’s won’t be restored, but it sounds like some good news for people that had noticed a quality issue with PNG and JPG’s.

han614698 wrote:

(#8)
Is cdn(2) getting removed?

for right now, probably not, since all the pages on the website actually point to cdn2, it's just that they get redirected to uploads

BrycedTea wrote:

We have recently been doing some work to how we deliver thumbnail images which should, overall, greatly improve the reliability of thumbnail loading and the site in general. We moved the resizing of thumbnail images into the cloud, freeing up many resources for the rest of the site.

One consequence is that we now resize gifs, which previously were delivered in their full size rather than in the size they appear on our various pages. Resizing makes the thumbnails use less data when downloading them but has lead to some users seeing the gifs as blurry. However, the overall benefits to how we deliver the thumbnails are well worth it.

-Scratch Team

Will the quality of the non-gif thumbnails be improved?

White_Lord wrote:

Will the quality of the non-gif thumbnails be improved?

A different Scratch Team member said this on their profile “The quality issues with some images will be addressed.”
https://scratch.mit.edu/users/codubee/#comments-177529236

So, I guess there is hope. On the bright side, I think my experience with using the Scratch Web site has been better now (seems stable, less lag).

BrycedTea wrote:

We have recently been doing some work to how we deliver thumbnail images which should, overall, greatly improve the reliability of thumbnail loading and the site in general. We moved the resizing of thumbnail images into the cloud, freeing up many resources for the rest of the site.

One consequence is that we now resize gifs, which previously were delivered in their full size rather than in the size they appear on our various pages. Resizing makes the thumbnails use less data when downloading them but has lead to some users seeing the gifs as blurry. However, the overall benefits to how we deliver the thumbnails are well worth it.

-Scratch Team

Just to let you know, it hasn't just been issues of quality. At least one gif stopped working altogether with an “Error transforming image” error message, namely the thumbnail of the Dads & Mums on Scratch studio. A new thumbnail with lesser resolution has since been uploaded, but the problem can be seen in this studio, which uses the original gif: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/30828890/

One question. Why are animated thumbnails look normal, if they are technically gifs?

White_Lord wrote:

Why are animated thumbnails look normal, if they are technically gifs?

Because animated project thumbnails are uncommon and can't be made without special code, they are different from studio and user thumbnails.

The GIF quality of animated Scratch pfps is currently terrible. I exported my logo pfp at 250x250 and on Scratch, it's 30x30 pixels, 16 times less than it should. I've talked with a few other designers with GIF pfps, and this is an issue for them as well. When will this be fixed?

BrycedTea wrote:

We have recently been doing some work to how we deliver thumbnail images which should, overall, greatly improve the reliability of thumbnail loading and the site in general. We moved the resizing of thumbnail images into the cloud, freeing up many resources for the rest of the site.

One consequence is that we now resize gifs, which previously were delivered in their full size rather than in the size they appear on our various pages. Resizing makes the thumbnails use less data when downloading them but has lead to some users seeing the gifs as blurry. However, the overall benefits to how we deliver the thumbnails are well worth it.

-Scratch Team

BrycedTea wrote:

We have recently been doing some work to how we deliver thumbnail images which should, overall, greatly improve the reliability of thumbnail loading and the site in general. We moved the resizing of thumbnail images into the cloud, freeing up many resources for the rest of the site.

One consequence is that we now resize gifs, which previously were delivered in their full size rather than in the size they appear on our various pages. Resizing makes the thumbnails use less data when downloading them but has lead to some users seeing the gifs as blurry. However, the overall benefits to how we deliver the thumbnails are well worth it.

-Scratch Team

I dont like to sound ungrateful online but i think it was just fine before but now they are sometimes blurry

panda-wat wrote:

Will the GIF quality improve soon?

hopefully no (ig)

Xancan wrote:

The GIF quality of animated Scratch pfps is currently terrible. I exported my logo pfp at 250x250 and on Scratch, it's 30x30 pixels, 16 times less than it should. I've talked with a few other designers with GIF pfps, and this is an issue for them as well. When will this be fixed?

you are correct, even my pfp looks too much pixilated, i think it will take time

Excuse me? It was worth it? Aren't all pfps have size less than 512 MB?