image display (particularly animated GIFs) without X11

[Eli the Bearded]

What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of X11?

Because it may help people understand the desire:

A few months ago I saw at a Maker Faire, a room full of old televisions
each one driven by a Pi displaying an ever changing selection of
animated GIFs, each for a short while, and then new one. In that version
each TV had a keyword theme that was being used to search for GIFs to
play.

This inspired me, so I bought a pi (model A+) and have managed to get
it working with a 5" portable TV as a the screen using the composite out
from the 3.5mm jack. I'm sure I can easily find X11 software to do the
video work, but I'd prefer something with less overhead.

I've tried emailing the guy who set them up at the Maker Faire, but he
has not replied and after a week I'm doubtful he will.

Elijah
------
would like to have a Christmas GIF TV

[Rob Morley]

On Wed, 9 Dec 2015 20:11:13 +0000 (UTC)
Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

> What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
> playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of
> X11?
>

https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/zgv/

[A. Dumas]

On 09/12/2015 21:11, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
> playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of X11?

>[...]

>
> Elijah
> ------
> would like to have a Christmas GIF TV

Great idea. Some suggestions from search "framebuffer animated gif":
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=65346&p=495665

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, A. Dumas <alex...@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
> On 09/12/2015 21:11, Eli the Bearded wrote:
>> What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
>> playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of X11?

> Great idea. Some suggestions from search "framebuffer animated gif":
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=65346&p=495665

I do actually use search engines before posting and I had found that.
When I tried omxplayer it did nothing. Well it printed a line of text,
but no images, no error messages, and it doesn't seem to have a verbose
mode. The SimpleMC (where MC seems to be Media Center) there seems to be
overkill.

I intend to try the zgv tool mentioned by the other respondent, but have
not had the time yet.

Elijah
------
remembers a time before google

[ray carter]

Try 'fbi' - no, I'm not kidding.

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, ray carter <r...@zianet.com> wrote:
> Try 'fbi' - no, I'm not kidding.

I thought that was just a still image viewer. Animated GIFs are a
must have. Does fbi/fim do animations?

Elijah
------
initial sources point to 'no'

[ray carter]

AFAIK, most image viewers which handle gifs work with animated gifs - but
I could be wrong.

[A. Dumas]

On 11/12/2015 21:09, Eli the Bearded wrote:

> In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, A. Dumas wrote:
>> Great idea. Some suggestions from search "framebuffer animated gif":
>> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=65346&p=495665
>
> I do actually use search engines before posting and I had found that.

Well, I couldn't have guessed from your post, nor from your other reply
that you even fully read it. So suck it.

[Rob Morley]

On 12 Dec 2015 01:36:25 GMT

There are two standards for GIFs, "GIF87a" and "GIF89a", the latter
allows more control of how multiple images are displayed.

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, ray carter <r...@zianet.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 22:57:25 +0000, Eli the Bearded wrote:
>> In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, ray carter <r...@zianet.com> wrote:
>>> Try 'fbi' - no, I'm not kidding.
>> I thought that was just a still image viewer. Animated GIFs are a must
>> have. Does fbi/fim do animations?

> AFAIK, most image viewers which handle gifs work with animated gifs - but
> I could be wrong.

I've installed fim now, and no, it did not animate my test GIF. Instead
it only displayed the first frame, as is typical of image viewers that
don't do animated GIFs. (For example "feh".)

Elijah
------
otherwise fim looks like a good program

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, Rob Morley <nos...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
> > What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
> > playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of
> > X11?
> https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/zgv/

Is there a trick to getting zgv to work with a Raspberry? I could not
find it as a pre-built package, only xzgv, which as the name implies
needs X11. I grabbed the source and compiled it, but all I get is:

svgalib: Cannot find EGA or VGA graphics device.

Here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45591https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45591https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45591

Someone ("rpdom") replies:

That is not surprising as the Pi does not have a PC style VGA or EGA
video hardware.

Would compiling it for SDL help? Reading about SDL on Pi implies there
are some restrictions:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=13789

Having gotten a Pi with no networking, I'm finding sneakernet with
modern high-dependency-count packages kind of tedious.

Has anyone here done this? Animated GIFs outside of X11?

Elijah
------
why couldn't that guy have published a guide?

[Stefan Enzinger]

On 2015-12-09 21:11, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
> playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of X11?

I just googled a little bit and don't if you tried those:

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=239059%23p239059

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=65346&p=495665

Somewhere in these postings someone also suggested to convert the .gif
to a video using ffmpg...

[Dom]

On 14/12/15 04:01, Eli the Bearded wrote:
> In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, Rob Morley <nos...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:
>>> What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
>>> playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of
>>> X11?
>> https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/zgv/
>
> Is there a trick to getting zgv to work with a Raspberry? I could not
> find it as a pre-built package, only xzgv, which as the name implies
> needs X11. I grabbed the source and compiled it, but all I get is:
>
> svgalib: Cannot find EGA or VGA graphics device.
>
> Here:
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45591https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45591https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45591
>
> Someone ("rpdom") replies:

I recognise that name from somewhere ;)

>
> That is not surprising as the Pi does not have a PC style VGA or EGA
> video hardware.
>
> Would compiling it for SDL help? Reading about SDL on Pi implies there
> are some restrictions:
>
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=13789
>
> Having gotten a Pi with no networking, I'm finding sneakernet with
> modern high-dependency-count packages kind of tedious.
>
> Has anyone here done this? Animated GIFs outside of X11?

On the Pi? Not yet.
On a Linux PC? Yes.
mplayer works with the -vo fbdev option. The Pi has fbdev framebuffer
support. Perhaps that will work? It'll probably need to install a heck
of a lot of dependencies though...

[Eli the Bearded]

In comp.sys.raspberry-pi, Stefan Enzinger <min...@aon.at> wrote:
> On 2015-12-09 21:11, Eli the Bearded wrote:
>> What software, particularly anything provided by NOOBS, would work for
>> playing scaled-to-fullscreen animated GIFs without the overhead of X11?
> I just googled a little bit and don't if you tried those:
>
> http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=239059%23p239059

That's a crazy scheme I have not seen before: it's a python script to
make a shell script (or cat'able file) with escape sequences to display
an image as low resolution color block art. It's like AAlib but without
the steroids.

> Somewhere in these postings someone also suggested to convert the .gif
> to a video using ffmpg...

I've already got gifsicle installed. That is one of my standard animated
GIF create / edit tools. I can use that to explode to individual
(unoptimized) GIF frames. From there I know how to create videos with
mencoder, if I want to. (But I don't have either mplayer/mencoder or
ffmpeg installed, now, on the Pi.)

At this point I'm thinking: fim can display still images easily, maybe I
can script it to display single frames images fast enough that it looks
like an animated GIF. In X11, I use feh for that purpose, it has subsecond
precision on the -D delay option. In fim, one of the scripting options
might let me do it.

Elijah
------
FbiStuffGif.cpp has nothing to indicate animation is in the works