Loop playback staggers

[slowtiger]

This is one feature where TVP 9 behaves worse than Mirage - at least on my machine.

I have a sequence of 8 or 12 frames (length doesn't matter), all drawn, no exposures, in a project which is longer than that. I select all of them, set the the loop button and play. The loop plays, but hangs at the last frame. No matter to what I set the repeat handles, no matter if I set the in and out marks or not - I don't get a smooth looped playback. It is not a memory issue, playback speed is 12 fps.

Where's the trick? I didn't find anything in the manual or here.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I'm going to ask you a question that might make you want to wallop me one, but it happens to all of us:
do you by any chance have the same frame on both ends.

[tonydusko]

I just upgraded from Mirage to TVP 9 and have a similar issue. When I loop a 3 or 4 frame segment, I do not get smooth playback either. But for me I find that at the last frame, the play head goes back to the first frame very, very fast so, in fact, It looks like 12 fps is playing at a much higher frame rate.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Hmmm- what's a good way to test this?

[Peter Wassink]

Hmmm- what's a good way to test this?

film the screen with a videocam?

[malcooning]

I agree - there's a problem here. I couldn't create Slowtiger's behavior (frame hanging), but I did see that the last frame jumps to the first frame very quickly - regardless of the frame rate.

Hmmm- what's a good way to test this?

Set frame rate to 3 fps (or even 1 fps). notice that between last frame and first frame the transition is ignoring the frame rate.

[Peter Wassink]

Set frame rate to 3 fps (or even 1 fps). notice that between last frame and first frame the transition is ignoring the frame rate.

slightly more simple solution

[slowtiger]

Paul: that was the first thing I checked because usually I create a loop with copying the first frame to the last position ... - nope, the loops were cleaned. It happens to every loop. In that project I have several loop layers (extras for a street scene), all of different length.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Marcus, you don't have to copy the first to the last; just set the tail handle to "Repeat".

[slowtiger]

Paul: this would work if I'd animate the cycle "in place" (and I use it for that purpose). But IMO a walk cycle can be animated easier with the character really moving from point A to B, so I copy the first frame to position B.

I just set up the video camera, expect a result later today.

[slowtiger]

Here's the video:
http://slowtiger.de/examples/loopbug.html

[tonydusko]

That's funny how your loop hangs at the last frame and mine races back to the beginning. But in both cases the frame rate is ignored at that end point so perhaps our problems are related. I am also running 9.0.2. I will try to upload a screen recording also.

[malcooning]

I think the problems are not related actually. I believe the case in which last frame quickly skips to the first one is a result of the last frame not being timed like the rest of the frames, and the case in which the frame hangs seems like something to do with rendition of the animation to the memory/disk.

Slowtiger, did you try to play the animation with the FLIP function (make you sure you set the flip duration to longer than you clip)?

[slowtiger]

I haven't used that flip thing since I assumed something basic like playback would not have changed between Mirage and TVP 9. I still expect loop playback to work as before, and rather not have a different new tool for that.

[malcooning]

I haven't used that flip thing since I assumed something basic like playback would not have changed between Mirage and TVP 9. I still expect loop playback to work as before, and rather not have a different new tool for that.

I'm just trying to isolate the problem.
Maybe you have different preview settings set in the two versions of TVP.
in TVP9, can you try the playback in all preview modes: Realtime, Proxy and Render?
As well, just for the check, set a low Data Rate (around 10MB/S) in the preview panel, and then check for the loop playback.