Hello,
I just uploaded a new model and converted a video to gif to use it as a thumbnail for the model.
But the published thumbnail is static, it only shows the first frame of the GIF. Also tried with WebP, same result. I can see the animation in the model page, but not when I see the thumbnail.
Any idea what’s the problem? 
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Nevermind… it was over 30Mb’s size limit.
On what platform are you viewing the published model? On a desktop browser, the GIF should play when the mouse hovers over it. In the Handy app, the gif will only play once the user accesses the model page (it won’t play is search results or anywhere else the model ‘card’ appears).
There are a few models out there that are exceptions to this (whose GIF thumbnails will auto-play on a desktop browser, without mouse-over).
I tried downloading the ones I’ve seen like that to compare frame counts, file sizes, etc. vs ones that don’t auto-play, and I can’t reconcile any consistent difference. Would love to know if anybody else has cracked the pattern!
Yes that’s really interesting - I’ve seen the same thing on rare occasions! I even reached out to a creator who had a gif auto playing on mobile to ask about their settings.
Even using their same settings and the same software, I wasn’t able to replicate their results.
I have 4 models with an animated gif main image. Only one of them plays automatically without mouseover. My latest one shows the second frame instead of the first until you mouseover, which starts playing at the first frame. I recreated a gif for that one and it still displays the wrong frame by default.
These are probably the legacy left-overs. In the early days of MakerWorld, GIFs imported from other platforms such as Printables play automatically. MW said at the time it would go back to fix those imported GIFs so they only play on mouseover. Either MW hasn’t had a chance to do that or these are the ones that were missed.
I just noticed that some of my GIF thumbnails play automatically and some don’t. (https://makerworld.com/en/collections/5263516-fidgets). I use the same simple ffmpeg options to create all my thumbnails from videos I take on my phone.
I can’t figure out the difference between the ones that auto play and those that don’t.
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For the mouseover issue, all I can say is: be sure the image is <30Mb. That was the catch for me.
For the second issue, happened to me as well. no clue. I had a gif where the product was blurred on the first frame, so I moved the last frame to the first position with ezgif editor. But after the upload on makerworld the thumbnail was still showing the old blurred frame. I tried changing gif to webp, no luck. The image I’m talking about is this:
