Uploading Animated GIF files using Facebook Graph API - facebook

I'm working on a project where we're trying to allow users to upload images to their Facebook Pages. Currently we've got Photos figured out, but, animated .GIF files transmit successfully yet show only the first frame.
When posting these same files directly to FB, they display properly.
It is my understanding that FB converts animated images to .mp4 (or another format) to treat them effectively like video.
We're discussing whether or not we should do that conversion ourselves and transmit them as videos, though they behave differently on the newsfeed.
I'm looking for assistance in what the proper API call to make is to successfully publish animated gifs. Apologies if this is a redundant post -- there are many others but none have a definitive answer and many are years old.
The one piece of advice I've seen (but haven't gotten confirmation on) is to transmit an animated gif as a URL rather than the file itself. I'm not fully sure of what this means.
Thanks in advance.

I had the same problem when I posted animated GIF's through the Photo Upload - Graph API endpoint. I assumed this was the correct way, because in the documentation they say GIF is supported as photo upload.
Because they GIF's uploaded via this endpoint didn't animate, I tried the Video API endpoint instead and it worked perfectly.
So, for animated GIF's to work properly, you have to use the Video API endpoint: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/video-api/guides/publishing/

Uploading a gif as a video is the correct answer.

Related

My clips never gets HD quality on Facebook

I have a problem uploading videos to Facebook and keep the original quality. I have tried every step and various solutions but it still never get HD (1080p) quality as the source file are. The highest I get is 720p.
I have Premiere Pro CC, the lastest version, and I have tried almost every codec settings there is. My file is in good quality 1080x1080 and when I export it the video looks great on the computer and even on Youtube.
Unfortunately with Facebook I can't get it to Work on my customers Facebook Page and the material looks crap.
There are other firms also uploading videos to the pages and theire content gets HD quality.
I have tried:
Alomost every codec setting recomended out there with h264.
I have checked the HD-box in Video Settings on my Facebook.
I have tried export it in Apple ProRes HQ and uploaded 1-2 GB files.
I have downloaded HD 1080p material from Youtube and uploaded to FB.
I have tried upload directly and even schedule it for weeks later.
Unfortunately there is still no luck.
Anyone out there having a solution I should try?
So I had the same problem for ages! and after a LOT of research, the only real answer I found is that Facebook gives different priorities to different users (ex: Verified and Not Verified).
So it has nothing to do with your rendering export settings...
It's all Facebook decisions...
It sounds like it may simply be a problem with the upload handling. You should be fine utilizing the native Facebook codec though it never hurts to rebuild it. There's explicit steps you can take here regarding Facebook codec standards: https://blog.pond5.com/12628-social-media-export-settings-in-adobe-premiere-pro-the-ultimate-guide/
Here's a few things I recommend for troubleshooting:
check that HD gear in the bottom right corner includes 1080. If it only goes up to
720, check to make sure your file is indeed 1080x1080.
make sure you are the one uploading directly into your customer's Facebook page.
after you've uploaded it, give it 10-20 minutes and check on it again. It's possible that they haven't finished converting the file to the proper quality if you immediately view it after upload.
I have the same issue. The best answer you have to speak someone with Technical support and this is only possible if you publish this question everywhere over the internet because the regular support are trained only to send you useless articles.
Secondly Youtube is the king of HD and 4K videos so far. Check out my 4K video. When i try to upload this 4K video on my facebook page. They simple create error. Then i downgrade it to 1080p and after upload it only watchable in 720p. Since, facebook do not care about real creator they will never reply your comments on time so get some real one from linkedin or nudge again and again their support by calling and emailing them back to back so they force to add a real technical guy in your discussion and he will solve your issue on your facebook page.
Drop me your page link on my Instagram Profile. i will add you in my discussion with facebook technical team.

Giphy Gifs having strange behaviour on Facebook?

I was trying to make use of facebook's new ability to show actual gifs in autoplay to make a small looping advertising for a facebook page.
I tested out the feature initially using some Giphy gifs and found it worked fine, receiving the visual message that facebook was loading the gif and it actually working on autoplay and looped forever on a user facebook "wall".
The thing is, with some more testing I found out there are 2 different behaviours for giphy gifs when you post its link:
1 - It behaves perfectly and works as expected and as an actual GIF.
2 - It weirdly adopts a sort of "video form" that doesn't auto-play and makes use of flash to loop the gif...
I tried to guess through some testing why that happened and thought I found a pattern regarding the actual number of frames and the resolution but still I can't get my uploaded gif to work fine.
http://gph.is/1PPYUPn
However this one that has bigger resolution and a larger number of frames behaves perfectly.
http://gph.is/1OuQv3a
Any fellow developer or someone from Giphy that is available to help me out?
UPDATE: I also noticed that the debug info from facebook for both links is completely different! Check it on https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
Solution:
upload your animation (mov or gif) on giphy.com
copy link that looks like this: http://giphy.com/gifs/str4ng35tr1nG
open https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
paste link and click „Debug”
your animation will show as a static link to media.giphy.com/…
after 30 sec, click „Scrape Again”
if this not help, try again until (GIF) symbol will appear on your animation. Now you know that you can paste link in post and animation will work as it should.

Using a UIImagePicker that only contains photos taken within the app

I'm using source code from apple (SquareCam) and I would like to figure out how I can use the photos taken in that app and see them in a library (like the photos app) without having all the other photos the user has taken elsewhere like in the regular camera.
I'm not too great at making apps yet so I'm pretty noobish.
I've gotten as far as opening the photo library but nothing else. no viewing individual photos or the options such as emailing, messaging and what not.
Don't think you can do that. It either all photos or no photos...
You can of course save the photo in your own documents directory and write your own photo viewer - there's quite some code and frameworks around that do most of the job, see e.g. the answers to this so question:
Open source photo viewer for IPhone

Facebook Audio Player Broken?

I am having a problem with sharing/liking links with Open Graph Protocol data for audio/mp3 files. They look OK on Facebook news feed/timeline, but when you click play button, it won't play. It says: undefined (see screenshot).
So I tried playing some older posts of links with OG meta data about audio/mp3 files, and they don't play either.
EDIT
I did some firebug inspection and the audio player is Flash based. I think the problem is in the flashvars part of the embed code. There is a flashvar for src but its value appears to be a SHA256 checksum instead of the URL of the mp3 file.
I got the same problem and I do not really understand what is the cause of this!!
I have tried the meta tags setting as provided here.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/music/
Give them a try also(if you have not yet) and see if they work for you.
Facebook has apparently removed the player. Their help file suggests making a music video. Very irritating.
seems to be a current bug:
http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/165246693563413
It seems like Facebook have finally fixed it - at least, the audio players on my page have started working again. Hopefully that means you should see it fixed relatively soon, depending on how this is rolled out.

iOS photo gallery - flickr

I'm working on an app for a client and the client wants absolutely everything to be shareable (using sharekit). One of the views that the client wants is a photo gallery that can be easily updated and viewed. I've looked around at folks who have done this and I particularly like the way the Obama 2012 app does it using flickr. This brings me to the question, I'm trying to use the flickr api to display a photo gallery that will allow sharekit to share the url to the image but am hitting a brick wall. I've searched for a few days now and haven't found a tutorial that shows a working example in the way I need it, if anyone has done something similar or knows a good tutorial that would be greatly appreciated.
Download the list of images using the Flickr API, and asynchronously add them to a UIScrollView inside a UINavigationController with its back button as "back". Then add a UIToolBar which has the items 'Next' and 'Previous' (use images). That will give you the look of a photo gallery.
Also, I came across this which is basically what I told you to do, but open source: http://www.cocoacontrols.com/platforms/ios/controls/fgallery
I wrote a tutorial on building a media gallery using a UICollectionView. It populates from the user's photo library, but is definitely more extensible than using a 3rd party.
iPhone Programming Tutorial: Creating An Image Gallery Like Over – Part 1
Hope that helps. Cheers!