Is 45 frames per second too high?

[pointer]

I did a little a research and learned that the consensus seems to be that 32 frames per second or less is optimal.

Is 45 fps for a standard flash web site about (800 x 600 resolution) overkill? Is there any serious downside to this, considering the target audience is new, faster computers?

Thanks.

[oldnewbie]

IMHO, yes! 34fps is the consensus I seem to come up with, especially in regards to Flash on Macs.

[billingsgate]

I did a little a research and learned that the consensus seems to be that 32 frames per second or less is optimal.

Is 45 fps for a standard flash web site about (800 x 600 resolution) overkill? Is there any serious downside to this, considering the target audience is new, faster computers?

Thanks.

The serious downside is that not everyone among your target audience has new, flashy computers, and even if they do, they may not be set up as you expect.

The frame rate you set in the Flash movie is more a suggestion than an accurate timer. Actual frame rate is determined by how many things the processor has to deal with.

It doesn't matter how new or fast the computer, if the Flash player is given too many instructions or stuffed with too many graphics, it will slow down. 45 fps is 50 percent more frames per second than 30 fps. That's 50 percent more stuff to download and load into memory for the movie to play, 50 percent more tweens, scripts, and graphics to process every second. Ironically, higher framerates can actually slow down performance because of this. In other words, your 45 fps movie may actually run SLOWER than the same movie at 30 fps.

I'd always heard 31 fps is the maximum recommended. I use 15 fps for character animation (same rate as on North American TV), and 31 for games and animated graphics. But just wait, every time someone raises this question, someone will inevitably come along and insist (often in ALL CAPS) that 60 fps is the best rate for smooth animation.

[oldnewbie]

I agree with you, but that was before MX2004 and/or even MX.

Again especially for Flash playback on Macs...

It's no longer available, but this guy (http://www.actionscripthero.com/adventures/mobile/thread.php?topic_id=590) even had a component to check the online Players' average speed compare to when the file played locally in the IDE... And it seemed that 34fps was from then, the best setting, again especially for Macs...

[BernzSed]

In about 20 or 30 years, people on this forum will be suggesting that 600 FPS is just about right, but for now, stick with around 30 or less.

Standard NTSC, the standard American video format, uses about 30 FPS. Who are we to call ourselves better than Steven Spielberg or Mell Brooks?
In other words, it's not necessary. People won't notice the increasing smoothness beyond a certain point.

Remember: the higher the framerate, the less you will be able to do per frame.
The absolutely last thing you ever want is for any of your visitors to see that dreaded pop-up: "A script in this movie is causing your computer to run slowly..."

[oldnewbie]

It's actually exactly 29.97fps... And film is actually 24fps.

That said, in regards to Flash, it's not so much that a smooth animation can't be done at 12, 15 or 18fps, it's more a problem of the Flash player plug-in itself in relation to playing a movie online in a web browser, as compared to playing some movie locally on your machine...

[billingsgate]

I just want to clarify, as someone who produces animation for television. NTSC is indeed 29.97 frames per second, while PAL is 25 fps. But character animation, for budget reasons, is normally produced "on twos": that is, the drawings change every other frame. Hence, the cartoons you watch on Saturday morning (after you've scolded your kids into leaving the room and doing something "useful") are actually being viewed by you at just under 15 frames per second. I can't understand why anyone would want to produce a character animation in Flash at anything faster than 15 fps, especially for web deployment. 15 fps puts relatively little strain on most computers and looks as good as on TV! For cartoon Flash animation, anything higher than 15 fps is a waste of bandwidth.

Of course, if you're doing really slick sliding graphics (not character animation), with lots of programmed tweening, or games which need fast responses, then going up to, er, 34 fps is advisable.

[mooska]

You should look in here .. :)
http://previous.emllabs.com/article.php?articleId=105

Best practise as far as I know are 19, 23, 31 ...

[brolife]

yep 31 is best for sites.
18-24 for banner ads.

[pointer]

Thanks very much for the thorough responses. I reduced my FPS from 45 to 31, and I did not notice much difference in speed or performance.

On another note, I think there has to be a bug in the flash player 8, because I am having a lot of trouble. Particularly, sometimes the flash player is fast, and other times it runs very slowly, even when the flash content is the only visible running application. I have a very fast computer with more than enough memory.

Does anyone else have issues with the flash player 8?
The article at the following link (that mooska posted above), seems to be on to this as well:

http://previous.emllabs.com/article.php?articleId=105

[brolife]

if you have an excessive amount of animation and stuff going on you might see a lack in performance.

[BernzSed]

Though I don't know why it might be running slow, I can guess at what makes it run different speeds at different times.

When you have streamed sound, Flash uses the sound on your computer to time the length of frames, instead of doing it itself. So, when your computer is running slow, it will slow down if there is no streamed sound, and not render frames it doesn't have time to render if there is.

Oh, yeah, and, if you can't get it to run fast, try changing the quality to a lower quality.
Also, I've noticed that excessive semi-transparency, especially in a linear/radial fill color, tends to slow down the computer, so try to avoid that.