Manual:$wgMaxAnimatedGifArea

Thumbnail settings: $wgMaxAnimatedGifArea
Force thumbnailing of animated GIFs above this size to a single frame instead of an animated thumbnail.
Introduced in version:	1.14.0 (r42058)
Removed in version:	still in use
Allowed values:	(integer)
Default value:	1.25e7

Other settings: Alphabetical | By Function

Details

Force thumbnailing of animated GIFs above this size to a single frame instead of an animated thumbnail.

As of MW 1.17 this limit is checked against the total size of all frames in the animation. It is kept equal to $wgMaxImageArea, which is 12.5 million pixels or 3500x3500. In previous versions this was set to 1 megapixel (1000x1000).

Explanation

For example this featured image of Canadian evolution is frozen but if you click on this direct link you can view the animation.

This means that with default configuration:

• If an animation is more than 12.5 MP total (width x height x number of frames), you get a single frame when scaled.
• If an animation is more than 12.5 MP per frame, you get the thumberror when scaling the image.

So if your image pixel size (image pixel size = width x height x number of frames) is higher than 12.5 MP then your image won't work on Wikipedia, when they are scaled.

Many of these images which exceed this might appear animated on their image description page because they're displayed in their native size, instead of as a scaled thumbnail.

Warning message

Files affected by this limit are labelled below the image with the contents of MediaWiki:File-no-thumb-animation-gif, which by default is

Note: Due to technical limitations, thumbnails of high resolution GIF images such as this one will not be animated.