Video/Audio stuttering and lagging on playback

Report · Nov 19, 2023

The live preview doesn't seem to have any issues.

But as soon as I record, and then try to playback, it lags and stutters like crazy.

The same thing happens when I drop in an audio file and try to playback the scene to see how my puppet's mouth moves.

I tried reading through previous issues, but all the tech jargon is difficult to understand.

Does anyone have a simple solution to the stuttering on playback?

Report · Nov 19, 2023

Here are my laptop specs (just copied and pasted from system info):

12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12500H 3.10 GHz

16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)

64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Report · Nov 20, 2023

Here are two other things I tried with no success:

1) I sized down the puppet file. It used to be over 20mb with a pixel height of over 2000px. I sized it down to 1500px in height and that reduced the file size to about 7mb. Still faced the same lag/stuttering issue on playback and recording.

2) I opened up an older project that I didn't have issues. This time I faced the lag/stuttering issue. So I don't think it has anything to do with how I've set up the puppet, or the files I'm working with, as I never had a problem with the older file until opening it up today.

Could it be a performance issue of my laptop? It's a Nitro 5 Acer laptop - fairly new (purchased less than 6 months ago) and I've only ever used it for adobe products for work related projects (photoshop, audition, character animator). It has very low mileage on it. I don't see how it would have trouble running an app like Character Animator...

Report · Nov 20, 2023

One thing that causes this is if you are using bluetooth headphones or a similar listening device. For some reason, the bluetooth interferes with playback. Fortunately, it does not affect the recording.

Report · Nov 20, 2023

Just tried turning off bluetooth on my laptop. I'm still experiencing the same level of lag/stutter on recording and playback.

I also tried decreasing the resolution down to 960x540 and it didn't seem to improve it in any noticeable way.

😕

I haven't tried uninstalling and reinstalling yet. Maybe I should try that next?

Also, attached is the puppet file. I create my puppets in procreate, export to a PSD file, and then open it in Illustrator and export as a PSD once again from Illustrator (that's what was recommended to me before when I had issues with my puppet file and that seemed to resolve the issue at that time...the issue was completely different to what I'm facing now. Basically the puppet wasn't tracking my movement like I had expected it to. But tracking is fine now with the procreate >> Illustrator >> .PSD method I mentioned above)

Report · Nov 20, 2023

Report · Nov 20, 2023

I tried out starter mode to see if the lag/stutter would happen with one of the starter puppets.

Sure enough, once I hit record, it lagged a lot and the resulting recording was very choppy and stuttery.

Report · Nov 20, 2023

Uninstalled and reinstalled. No improvement.

Report · Nov 21, 2023

Updated graphics driver (my laptop uses NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU).

Installed a previous version of Character Animator.

Still no improvement.