[P_Jamula]

@P_Jamula Yes, you can centralize the animated gifs. I use a network share for the animated gifs. But you can't use an UNC path. Maybe it's a bug or it's the gifs itself. I don't know. If you use an UNC path to store the gifs, the gif is displayed but you have no animation. So you have to store the animated gifs local or substitute a drive letter.

e.g. You store your gifs at \\servername\animatedgifs you need to map this UNC path to a local drive at your HTPC e.g. local letter G: --> \\servername\animatedgifs
If you add the gifs in Kodi now, point to g:\animated_gif_name.gif.

On your other instances of Kodi make sure you have a path substitution of G: --> \\servername\animatedgifs too. So the Kodi database points always to the same point no matter which Kodi instance do you use.
In my case it's working on 2 machines.

Thanks Andy... but I am a bit confused....
"If you add the gifs in Kodi now, point to g:\animated_gif_name.gif". ...... the skin adds the gif's automatically in a folder within the thumbnails folder... I do not know how to just do a path substitution for the animated gif's and let the skin know that this where this sub folder of thumbnails is located elsewhere...
sorry but am not too knowledgeable in these technical matters...perhaps if you could spare the time for a step by step instructions...
also animated gifs are a sub folder within the thumbnails folder...and I read in the KODI wiki that it is not wise to share the thumbnails folder between various KODI instances via path substitution.