So Pixiv has started to encrypt the Ugoira ZIP file caches (that is the source image set held in a ZIP file is now password protected, preventing a user from downloading and unzipping the individual frames) on their site and blocked JavaScript Console downloads of them. Some Chrome and Firefox extensions still work to download them into converted formats like WEBM and GIF though. Just in case anyone else runs into an issue trying to convert them.

Honestly...their desire to block people from accessing and sharing these animations has baffled me for years. I wish they'd just jump on the WEBM band wagon already.

Qmannn said:
In the event they successfully completely lock them and the artist doesn't host their work elsewhere, I can at least still use my capture device as a last resort. Won't be as good as the original, but it'd suffice for me at the very least. I'm already doing that to get around having to use CypherGuard.

Do users still require extensions/scripts just to download images? If so, their desire to restrict Ugoiras makes sense. I wish they'd give artists a choice in the matter, though I have a feeling many of them would opt-in.

I mean Ugoira's made sense to get past the 256 color limit of GIFs but with WEBM now becoming basically defacto its a waste of bandwidth and time to still use that flipbook style Ugoira.

Qmannn said:
I wish they'd give artists a choice in the matter, though I have a feeling many of them would opt-in.

Agreed 100%
Not really sure what they're trying to do with all these bizarre UI/infrastructure implementation decisions

It won't even load for me.
If someone is bothered enough they might reverse the mechanism and make a downloader.

I can still download stuff just fine and nothing's encrypted. You happen to have some example or are they slowly rolling out some update?

As for their implementation, that's actually quite genius in my opinion. HTML5 canvas has as wide support as HTML5 itself, meaning the animations will work basically everything supporting standard HTML5, compared to videos which still have some compatibility issues, mainly browser manufacturers refusing to include the support.

Not being able to save the animations directly is also really good for them, as users have to access and register their site to view it. And in a way that could be positive to artist as well, if they actually do not want their stuff elsewhere. JPG as frame format is a bit double edged sword, while it does allow far higher quality from basic gif, it also means compression artifacting and only being able to post small animation loops.

As the animation is still loaded, there are many other ways to access the images from saving content of HTML5 canvas or checking network tab and copy images data as URL. Just that the easiest way to do things has been downloading the archive and then looking the frame delays from page source. Like Qmannn stated it's also possible to use screen capturing utilities because of the problems they usually generate.

Oh yeah it's not encrypted. Don't know why OP said it was, or maybe only new ones are?
The zips have jpgs inside.

Here is a nifty tool:
http://ugoira.dataprocessingclub.org/

I cannot confirm whether or not it works right now, though. It goes offline from time-to-time.

banhday said:
Oh yeah it's not encrypted. Don't know why OP said it was, or maybe only new ones are?
The zips have jpgs inside.

Was browsing the newest ones and all's working just fine. That's why I was asking.

chdgs said:
Here is a nifty tool:
http://ugoira.dataprocessingclub.org/

I cannot confirm whether or not it works right now, though. It goes offline from time-to-time.

That is really good website and that's what I have been recommending for everyone as it's super easy and does produce high quality conversions with correct frame rates. However that site seems to be always down and even now there's just note that they'll get back in a week written over month ago.

Because of that it's simply much easier to get the zip with frames and convert them into other formats yourself. Luckily they are numbered so it's easy to handle them as image sequence with video programs.

Excuse my ignorance, but what even is pivix ugoira?

I looked it up and got a bunch of site with letters in a different character set from What I can read, so I was kind of afraid to click on anything.

Sorry.

Qmannn said:
Animations on Pixiv. Think of animated GIFs or videos (like WEBM), except JPGs are played from a ZIP archive at specific intervals instead. They can't be directly saved as videos or GIFs without some workarounds. Read Mario69's posts for more details. He has a far better understanding of this than I do.

Also, Pixiv has an English option, though I don't know if that option is available to non registered users.

That's pretty much it. If you see animation here that has source from pixiv, it's most likely converted from ugoira e.g. from bunch of jpg images into gif or webm. Actually many services which offer animated stickers use similar system, they have the frames of animation in single PNG, then just use code to cut certain part of it to show for the viewer in certain time.

As for english option, we are still talking about website dedicated to japanese audience. So similar to NicoNico, even if there is option to use site in english, majority of content is in japanese. Meaning all the descriptions, ads, tags, etc. are still japanese. It makes handling your own account easier though.

Mario69 said:
Actually many services which offer animated stickers use similar system, they have the frames of animation in single PNG, then just use code to cut certain part of it to show for the viewer in certain time.

That's a variant on general 'CSS sprite' technique, and it's almost certainly more efficient cpu-wise and bandwidth-wise than ugoira's multi-file approach. If they would require animated uploads to be in lossless formats like PNG, then they could use this method. But AFAICS they have to handle lots of JPG-based stuff, so it is not so suited to their case.

banhday said:
It won't even load for me.
If someone is bothered enough they might reverse the mechanism and make a downloader.

They load for me on Chrome, but not on Firefox for some reason.

Qmannn said:
Cool...

Mario69 said:
...Stuff

Oh. Thanks.