Ryan kept whining about how he has to have an animated avatar. I finally gave in and figured out how to make this work.

The problem is that I'm using file_column and its rmagick support to keep the avatars small. By default it will just take the first frame of an animated gif and throw the rest away. I did some searching and found a post that said to just use ImageList, instead of Image. Then just iterate through each image and resize them individually. Here's the code...

def transform_with_magick
  if needs_resize?
    begin
      imgs = ::Magick::ImageList::new(absolute_path)
    rescue ::Magick::ImageMagickError
      @magick_errors ||= []
      @magick_errors << "invalid image"
      return
    end
 
    if options[:magick][:versions]
      options[:magick][:versions].each_pair do |version, version_options|
        next if version_options[:lazy]
        dirname = version_options[:name]
        FileUtils.mkdir File.join(@dir, dirname)
        resize_image(imgs, version_options, absolute_path(dirname))
      end
    end
    if options[:magick][:size] or options[:magick][:crop]
      resize_image(imgs, options[:magick], absolute_path)
    end
 
    GC.start
  end
end


def resize_image(imgs, img_options, dest_path)
  begin
    if img_options[:crop]
      img = imgs.first
      dx, dy = img_options[:crop].split(':').map { |x| x.to_f }
      w, h = (img.rows * dx / dy), (img.columns * dy / dx)
      for img in imgs
        img.crop!(::Magick::CenterGravity, [img.columns, w].min,
         [img.rows, h].min)
      end
    end
 
    if img_options[:size]
      for img in imgs
        img.change_geometry!(img_options[:size]) do |c, r, i|
          i.resize!(c, r)
        end
      end
    end
  ensure
    imgs.write dest_path
    File.chmod options[:permissions], dest_path
  end
end


Just paste these methods in over the existing ones in 'magick_file_column.rb'. Hopefully someone will revive the project and we can get stuff like this put into the main plugin.

Go crazy Ryan.