Playback performance in version 6

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:52 pm

There have been a few posts about playback performance in version 6. Here's what I can tell you:

1. In version 6, the image rendering quality on-canvas has been turned up. If you use a lot of images this may affect you (somebody posted about using 75 image layers). Use the Display Quality popup and try turning off "Smooth images". Instead of doing a full alpha blend on-canvas, you'll get just on or off for each pixel. For some images you may not notice, but for soft-edged shapes, the quality will noticeably go down to version 5 levels.

2. General slow playback. Selgin posted a sample file that shows this. The problem is this: Most files in Anime Studio have a start and an end frame (they default to 1 and 240). However, there's a semi-secret feature where you can set the end frame to 0 and Anime Studio will dynamically adjust the end frame to match the latest keyframe in the document. This "trick" isn't working so well in version 6 and is what is causing the slowdown. Selgin (and anyone else who sees a slowdown), try going to the Project Settings dialog and set the end frame to some value other than 0. Playback will speed up a *lot*. That's the workaround for now, and I'll see if the 0 end frame tick can be sped back up.

3. Layer visibility, some good news. It used to be that playback didn't speed up a whole lot if you made layers invisible. This is because those layers still had to have their keyframes processed during playback. But in version 6, hiding any unused layers will speed up playback significantly. They're totally ignored during playback. So any layers you don't need to see (background elements, secondary effects, etc.) can either be hidden or set to "Hide in editing view" to get faster playback.

b15fliptop · Post by **b15fliptop** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:16 pm

I was the 75 image layers guy, and the "0 end frame" was the problem. Thanks for clearing this up! I thought 6 was going to be unusable for me, and it was just this silly project setting...

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:25 pm

b15fliptop wrote:I was the 75 image layers guy, and the "0 end frame" was the problem. Thanks for clearing this up! I thought 6 was going to be unusable for me, and it was just this silly project setting...

Just curious - did you intentionally set the end frame to 0? There didn't used to be an end frame at all, so some much older files (maybe dating back to version 4) would all have their end frames set to 0.

b15fliptop · Post by **b15fliptop** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:41 pm

Lost Marble wrote:Just curious - did you intentionally set the end frame to 0?

I did, in fact. The ironic part is that I only recently started doing that because I read someone else's post about it here, and it seemed like a good idea! Ha! I think I only have the one file that is set with a zero end frame, and that happened to be the one that I loaded up to test out ASP6. I am SO glad to find out that there isn't a problem with images and the new version!!

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 1:58 pm

Selgin (and anyone else who sees a slowdown), try going to the Project Settings dialog and set the end frame to some value other than 0. Playback will speed up a *lot*. That's the workaround for now, and I'll see if the 0 end frame tick can be sped back up.

Wow, thanks mike, that works wonderfully!, I thought it could be a problem with older files, I thought my old files will never be the same on 6. You made my day