Animating on Photoshop

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@austinmdiamond wrote:

I just created 60 frames and tried exporting it. The video is now two seconds long, but it is playing WAY faster than it does when played from the PS timeline. If I count how many frames pass by on the timeline per second, I get 12. 

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If my understanding is correct, when the Timeline panel is in Frame Animation mode, and you have frames set to 0 seconds, you probably can’t preview exactly what the exported duration will be. Again, web browsers treat 0 seconds as “play this as fast as you can” which varies depending on the hardware, software, and frame size of the animation, so the one thing you won’t be able to expect from Frame Animation is a duration consistent across players.

If that applies to Photoshop as well (and I don’t exactly know if it does, but I am guessing that it might), then when the Timeline is in Frame Animation mode, the exact playback duration in Photoshop might also depend on the complexity and frame size/complexity of the animation vs. the speed of the hardware. Because remember, Frame Animation mode only allows you to set a duration at the individual frame leve, not enforce a consistent timeline frame rate like Video Timeline mode does. So as long as it is exported as animation and not video, you can’t count on two seconds for 60 frames.

A second reason — the Photoshop timeline is not optimized for performance because it has not been rendered/exported. It contains original full quality layer content. So it probably takes more power to play back frames quickly, so the Photoshop timeline typically can’t play back frames as quickly as an optimized exported file.

So, here are my expectations for how fast Photoshop timeline content should play.

Given 60 frames in Frame Animation mode set to 0 seconds each (“play each frame as fast as you can”), I would expect that:

• Photoshop will play that original, un-optimized content as fast as it can, which will depend on the frame size, layers, content, processing power, etc. It may play back 12 frames per second on one computer, 27 fps on a faster computer, and 5 fps on an older computer.
• A web browser or other animation player will play an animated GIF as fast as it can, and that will again depend on the frame size, browser code, and computer hardware…but because the exported file is optimized, a player should be able to play it back faster than a Frame Animation timeline in Photoshop. One computer might play it back at 23 frames per second, and another at 37 frames per second. 

If converted to Video Timeline, and the frame rate is set to 30 frames per second:

• Photoshop will attempt to play it at 30 frames a second. But if the computer hardware can’t process the original, un-optimized layers fast enough to achieve that, and if Allow Frame Skipping is enabled, video timeline mode will skip frames to keep it in sync. If Frame Skipping is off, playback may be slower than 30 frames per second if the hardware can’t render un-cached frames 30 times per second.
• A video player will play the optimized, exported video file at 30 frames per second precisely.

So, really, it is not surprising that the times are inconsistent, given that the Frame Animation and Video Timeline modes are based on totally different ways of frame timing. And it’s not surprising that Photoshop would play an un-optimized Frame Animation timeline slower (12fps) than something that gets to play the optimized, easier to process exported file format.

If this is not helpful, we’ll have to wait for someone to reply who has a deeper understanding of this than I do.