How do I use an animated .gif in my iPhone application? - iphone

Question

I have an animated gif file that I want to use in my iPhone application, but the animation doesn't work. Does anybody know how to fix it?

Answer 1

If you have a serie of images you want to animate you can easily do it with UIImageView:
UIImage *blur5 = [UIImage imageNamed:#"blur5.png"];
UIImage *blur6 = [UIImage imageNamed:#"blur6.png"];
self.imageView.animationImages = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:blur5, blur6, nil];
self.imageView.animationRepeatCount = 5;
[self.imageView startAnimating];
I found this easier than trying to use UIWebView.

Answer 2

UIWebView does not properly display all GIF content. You need to use a UIImageView, but the iPhone OS does not support animated GIFS and only displays the first frame.
So you need to extract all of the other frames first.
Crude example code here:
http://pliep.nl/blog/2009/04/iphone_developer_decoding_an_animated_gif_image_in_objc

Answer 3

You can use source at http://blog.stijnspijker.nl/2009/07/animated-and-transparent-gifs-for-iphone-made-easy/
It has a GIF decoder that you can use directly to get solution.
I successfully used it. But it have some problems with transparency.

Answer 4

This can be achieved by this piece of code:
NSArray * imageArray = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:[UIImage imageNamed:#"1.png"], [UIImage imageNamed:#"2.png"], nil]; //this will be the frames of animation images in sequence.
ringImage = [[UIImageView alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100,200,600,600)];
ringImage.animationImages = imageArray;
ringImage.animationDuration = 1.5;//this the animating speed which you can modify
ringImage.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFill;
[ringImage startAnimating];//this method actually does the work of animating your frames.
I know its an old thread..but may be helpful for someone..:)

Answer 5

One other option is to decode the gif in your application, and then "frame serve" it to a OpenGL object. This way is less likely to run out of memory for large gifs.