Do your animation previews feel slow? Is the app dropping frames when you preview your work? Ideally, FlipaClip shows an animation preview at the set FPS value. However, there can be times when the preview is not hitting the FPS value or some frames are getting skipped as you watch your previews. This has to do with the limitations of your device. But don’t worry, the slower previews or skipped frames will not affect the movie when you finally export it as a movie.
So what’s happening under the hood? Well, FlipaClip loads the most used frames onto RAM for fast access. When the amount of memory used by this caching process goes past a certain point, the playback performance can be affected and start to feel slow. So longer animations might hit this limit quickly, while smaller length animations will be just fine.
Another potential reason for playback issues is when audio is added to the animation. When you add sound files to an animation project, the app focuses on keeping the animation in sync with the audio. A decrease in smoothness can come as a result of this. This happens because frames are dropped in order to keep up with the audio playback.
Here’s how you can work around these common playback issues:
- Work on a smaller canvas - The bigger the canvas size, the more pixels will need to be loaded. A greater number of pixels require more system resources. This is basically why decreasing the size of your canvas can make playback animation hit that FPS value and feel a lot smoother.
- Hide or delete unused layers - You can improve playback speed by hiding the layers you don’t need such as the background layers or delete layers that you aren’t using. This lessens the burden on your device as you review your work through playbacks.
- Temporarily mute your animation - If your animation uses audio but your goal is to finish up your drawings, you can opt to mute your audio as you review your animation. This will help your device to manage the playback process smoothly. Just don’t forget to unmute before sharing your movie otherwise it will be a silent film.
- Turn off Blend Mode and Glow - Both features can be resource-intensive and may slow down your device. Turn it back on before sharing your movie otherwise, it will not show in your final work.