[Michael Lenz]

Hi,

 

I’m making an animation which is about 700 frames so far and when I try to play the whole thing, it lags, some frames don’t show up and it no longer syncs up with my audio. Any idea why this is happening?

 

Thanks!

-Mike

[Niels]

Hi Mike,

It seems it for some reason is struggling to keep up. So it will skip frames to try to keep in sync – but apparently it doesn’t succeed.

Would you mind uploading your .ap file somewhere and email me the link so I can investigate what is happening? Or you can we-transfer it to me. My email is the one you got your activation key from.

Also, what is your computer specs? OS, memory, CPU, etc?

Thanks,
Niels

[Michael Lenz]

Hi Niels, thanks so much for your quick response!

 

I am a musician and am trying to make a quirky/cute video for one of my songs so I am very much an amateur animator and this is my first time using your software.

 

I am using a Microsoft Surface operating on Windows 10 pro with 4GB ram and 64 bit operating system.

It could be my surface cant keep up with the processing or perhaps I’m also using too many original frames (I’ve been converting a lot of clones into originals so that I can modify them, perhaps I should try to use a more advanced method of animating).

Anyway, I we-transferred you my .ap file, hopefully you can see what I might be doing that’s causing the delays.

 

Thanks again for your haste with you reply!

 

-Mike

[Niels]

Thanks Mike! I got your file!

It’s late here in Denmark – I will have a look tomorrow, and get back to you.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi again Mike,

Sorry for the delay. My programmer has been off sick and now he is on vacation, so unfortunately I couldn’t get him to take a closer look at your file. But I have looked at it my self. First of all, what a great song and nice and funny idea for the video. I like it.

I don’t see anything that pops out as problematic with your animation, layers, background layers etc. Also, whatever the resolution or complexity each frame would have, it is all cached and should play perfectly. And actually it does play perfectly here at my end.

Looking at your computers specs above, that looks fine too. So unfortunately I can’t explain the lagging you experience.

What happens when you switch off one, two or three layers before playing? Does that change anything? I don’t expect it will.

I converted your file from 1920 x 1080 to 1280 x 720. I have emailed it back to you. Going to a lower resolution should have a positive impact for you. Let me know if that helped or not?

And by the way, when you are done with your video, you can just change resolution back up to 1920 x 1080 and have all your details intact. Do that before you export your final video. No visual information lost, no blurring. It’s AP magic 😉

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Came to think – are you out of memory maybe? Could you check how much memory is free on your system before you load your ap-file and after?

[Michael Lenz]

Hi Niels,

Thanks so much for your support. The lower resolution video does play better but still not perfectly. When the frame count in the top right corner turns red does that mean it is struggling and skipping frames?

I did notice that when I turn off some layers it does play normally like I want it to. It might be overloaded with info, at least for my tablet to handle. Do you think I would benefit from making a new file for each scene? I might try that and then stitch the files together in iMovie in post.

Thanks again,

 

-Mike

[Niels]

No problem Mike 🙂

yeah, the red frame number was supposed to indicate that it can’t keep up. However, right now there’s a bug with it, so it will turn red at odd times – even when it is absolutely not struggling. 🙂 we’ll get it fixed soon.

Doing your animation scene for scene is normally the way to go. And then edit them together afterwards as you suggest. This is often a simpler way of working and also is less demanding on memory usage. However, it should be perfectly doable to have a few scenes together as one file – no problem. But why it is in your case is puzzling…

For now try the scene by scene approach. When Frederik (programmer) is back, we might be able to investigate this better.

[Nantevevit]

Hey!)
I agree, everything freezes too ((

[Niels]

Hi Nantevevit,

Can you explain to me what freezes? I need all the details on how to replicate this please.

Thanks,
Niels