Grrr! Smooth Animation problem - AE7

Hi. I'm trying to get a PNG image to travel L to R across the screen, starting and finishing off-screen. This is a white/grey image layer against a plain black background.
The image when travelling looks slighty jittery (almost vibrating), and when rendered and burnt onto DVD a lot of shaking is evident.
My PC is dual core XP 4GB ram and plenty of drive space. I'm rendering at 30fps (no noticable difference at 40 or 50 either) progressive to uncompressed AVI.
I've tried adding and removing keyframes, changing the motion blur options, changing the keyframe interpolation options, but nothing seems to get rid of the jitter. All my other compositions on this project work ok, just this one causing a problem!
Any ideas? Thanks

You've most likely experiencing a stroboscopic effect caused by the relationship between the frame rate, the distance the image moves across the frame and what is called
persistence of vision which is why movies work in the first place. There are only two options to fix this problem. You must either change the speed of the movement or mask the effect with motion blur. The higher the contrast in the image, especially the higher the contrast between the edge and the background, the harder it is to hide this problem.
This problem is not unique to motion graphics or animation. Cinematographers also face the same problem. Any DP worth his day rate will know about critical panning speeds. They are referenced in cinematography manuals so that you can avoid the judders. Interlaced video (normal video cameras) are not as subject to this problem because they shoot 50 or 60 fields per second.
One suggestion you might try is to feather the edges a bit by creating a mask that's the same width but taller than the image, then feathering the edge edge a bit. Removing the juddering in the detail of the image requires additional motion blur.
You can use the following expression to the layer's position property to move the image from left to right. Change the + to a - to move from right to left. This will keep the movement in whole pixel values. You change the speed value to any whole number.
spd = 2; //speed setting
move = time/thisComp.frameDuration * spd;
x = value[0];
y = value[1];
[x + move, y]
This expression will work for any frame rate. If you want to roll instead of pan add
move to
X. This works great for credit rolls. You can find a sample project
http://www.hottek.net/samples/perfectMove.zip%3Ehere%3C/a%3E.

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Graphics2D and AffineTransform needs object-reuse for smooth animation!

Hi,
I'm currently working on a graphical framework for animation using Java2D but has come to a dead end. The goal of the framework is to deliver smooth animation on various platforms, but this seems impossible due to the following fact:
I have a tree of graphical objects i render on a Graphics2D-object. Some of the objects to be rendered are transforms on the Graphics2D instead of visible objects - this way I can have transform-objects in my tree which will affect all child-objects. This is all very nice, but when doing transformations on the Graphics2D A LOT of objects are being created by the implementation of Graphics2D (SunGraphics2D). I've designed my framework to utilize object-reuse and cacheing-mechanisms to ensure no garbage collection is performed when actual animation is in progress - if gc's are performed, this results in visible pauses in the animation. Now, I would like to ask if someone knows how to get around this problem, or suggest I simply abandon Java2D?
The details of my problem is the following:
When doing transforms on the Graphics2D-object which is passed to every object in the tree (and hence, a lot of transformations are being done), a lot of FontInfo-objects are being created - even though I don't use any of them - it's all in the subsystem. The source in the SunGraphics2D is as follows:
// this is called by my framework to rotate all childs in the tree
public void rotate(double d) {
transform.rotate(d);
invalidateTransform(); // the evil starts here
// this is called a lot of places in SunGraphics2D
protected void invalidateTransform() {
// a lot is thigs are going on in this method - cutted out...
// before this method returns, the following takes place
fontInfo = checkFontInfo(null, font); // now we are getting there
// this is the method of pure evil object allocations
public FontInfo checkFontInfo(FontInfo fontinfo, Font font1) {
// every time this method is called, a FontInfo-object is allocated
FontInfo fontinfo1 = new FontInfo();
// and a lot of other objects are being created as well...
}I have come to think, that Java2D is pretty old and should be pretty mature at this point, but now I doubt it since object-reuse is a pretty obvious way of doing optimizations.
Has any of you experienced the same problem or maybe found a solution to doing transformations on a Graphics2D-object without a ton of objects being created?
If you would like to have a look at the problem you can do the following:
Make yourself a little program which is doing some transforms on a Graphics2D-object in a loop (to emulate the 25fps animation and the transform-objects in the tree). Now use your favorite memory profiler (I use JProbe Memory Profiler, free evaluation) and see for yourself - the objects which are garbage collected includes a ton of FontInfo-objects and many AffineTransform-objects.
If I do not find any solution to this problem, I'm forced to face the fact, that Java2D is not suitable for animation-purposes - gc's during animation is no solution!
Thank you for your time - hope to hear from you soon.
Regards,
// x-otic.

I think the main point is java transform objects are to slow to use in animations. They definitly have there uses, but for fast animations you need something more optimized.
If you assume a general graphic objects has getHeight, width, x, y, render(). You could do translations using these general properties at an abstract level, letting each graphic object implements its own way to render itself and use the properties.
I tryed to make sense!

Smooth animation

hi there,
trying to achieve smooth animation, or graphics moving on screen without flickering blinking.
I checked some code samples here on Sun website and tried to use that technique to paint into off-screen image first and then just draw image on screen. I finished with something like this:
BufferedImage Sce;
public Graphics2D createGraphics2D(int w, int h) {
        Graphics2D g2 = null;
        if ( Sce == null || Sce.getWidth() != w || Sce.getHeight() != h ) {
            Sce = (BufferedImage) createImage(w,h);
        g2 = Sce.createGraphics();
        g2.setBackground(getBackground());
        g2.clearRect(0,0,w,h);
      g2.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
        return g2;
    public void somethingToDraw(Graphics2D a) {
              //bit of my code to draw shapes
    public void paint(Graphics g) {
        Dimension d = getSize();
        Graphics2D a = createGraphics2D(d.width, d.height);
        somethingToDraw(a);
        a.dispose();
        if ( Sce != null ) {
            g.drawImage(Sce, 0, 0, this);
}I think i copied almost everything as it was in the original sample, but it is flickering even more than in direct drawing. maybe i do mistake somewhere.
actually, scene is redrawn by method repaint(); which is called either in thread or on defined event.
should I refresh screen by repaint() or something else?

re-parent my drawing object to JPanel
Since Swing is double-buffered you can usually eliminate the offscreen (Sce) buffer.
I have not found any difference in flicker between Applet and application. AWT in either
form can have problems with flicker; (well-written) Swing does not. The main difference
between applets and applications is how you deal with applet/app context for
initialization/startup for things like loading images and calling start methods. It always
seems to take some tinkering to get things to work the way you want.
Here are a couple of suggestions for reducing flicker in AWT.
// <applet code="AnimationTest" width="400" height="400"></applet>
// ues: >appletviewer AnimationTest.java
import java.applet.Applet;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.geom.*;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
public class AnimationTest extends Applet {
    Controller controller;
    public void init() {
        AnimationPanel ap = new AnimationPanel();
        controller = new Controller(ap);
        setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        add(ap);
    public void start() {
        controller.start();
    public void stop() {
        controller.stop();
    private static WindowListener closer = new WindowAdapter() {
        public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
            System.exit(0);
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Applet applet = new AnimationTest();
        Frame f = new Frame();
        f.addWindowListener(closer);
        f.add(applet);
        f.setSize(400,400);
        f.setLocation(200,200);
        applet.init();
        f.setVisible(true);
        applet.start();
class AnimationPanel extends Canvas {
    BufferedImage image;
    Ellipse2D.Double ball;
    double radius;
    double theta;
    double thetaInc;
    public void paint(Graphics g) {
        if(image == null)
            initImage();
        g.drawImage(image, 0, 0, this);
     * omitting the call to super.update below avoids
     * clearing and repainting the whole background
     * with each call to repaint -> one way to reduce flicker
    public void update(Graphics g) {
        paint(g);
    public void advance() {
        // make certain image has been initialized
        if(image == null)
            return;
        // reposition the ball
        int w = getWidth();
        int h = getHeight();
        theta += thetaInc;
        ball.x = w/2 + radius*Math.cos(theta);
        ball.y = h/2 + radius*Math.sin(theta);
        // update image
        Graphics2D g2 = image.createGraphics();
        g2.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,
                            RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
        g2.setPaint(Color.white);
        g2.fillRect(0,0,w,h);
        g2.setPaint(Color.red);
        g2.fill(ball);
        g2.dispose();
        // repaint only the section that is changing
        // another way to reduce flicker
        repaint((int)ball.x-15, (int)ball.y-15, (int)ball.x+15, (int)ball.y+15);
    private void initImage() {
        int w = getWidth();
        int h = getHeight();
        radius = Math.min(w, h)/4.0;
        theta = 0;
        thetaInc = Math.toRadians(1);
        double x = w/2 + radius*Math.cos(theta);
        double y = h/2 + radius*Math.sin(theta);
        ball = new Ellipse2D.Double(x, y, 15, 15); // diameter = 15
        image = new BufferedImage(w, h, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
                //getCompatibleImage(w, h);
        //System.out.printf("image = %s%n", image);
        Graphics2D g2 = image.createGraphics();
        g2.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,
                            RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
        g2.setPaint(Color.white);
        g2.fillRect(0,0,w,h);
        g2.setPaint(Color.red);
        g2.fill(ball);
        g2.dispose();
     * some operating systems do better with a compatible image
     * check the type of the BufferedImage returned by this method
     * most likely not be a factor in flicker-reduction
    private BufferedImage getCompatibleImage(int w, int h) {
        GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
        GraphicsDevice gd = ge.getDefaultScreenDevice();
        GraphicsConfiguration gc = gd.getDefaultConfiguration();
        BufferedImage bestImage = gc.createCompatibleImage(w, h);
        return bestImage;
class Controller implements Runnable {
    AnimationPanel animationPanel;
    Thread thread;
    boolean animate;
    public Controller(AnimationPanel ap) {
        animationPanel = ap;
        animate = false;
    public void start() {
        if(!animate) {
            animate = true;
            thread = new Thread(this);
            thread.start();
    public void stop() {
        animate = false;
        thread.interrupt();
        thread = null;
    public void run() {
        while(animate) {
            try {
                Thread.sleep(40);
            } catch(InterruptedException ie) {
                System.out.println("Controller interrupted");
                stop();
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}

Smooth animation in Flash CS5.5??

I've been workin in Flash for some years now and I've animated a lot of elements during these years.
But now I seem to have a problem getting my stuff to animate in a smooth way (it hasn't been a problem before).
I've created a car (cartoonstyle) entirely i Flash - vectorbased - and I want it do move across the screen.
The problem is that it animate in a non-smooth way (it seem to get "chopped" - like the frames just "jump" from one frame to the next).
I've tried to change the FPS (I've tried 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 29 and 30 (and also 29,97)) but with no luck.
The idea is to have the car to drive in to an autoshop, so the speed of the car shouldn't be too fast...
I'm workin on a short animation and the screen is 1920x1080.
As I mentioned I have been working with Flash for some years, but either I'm overworked (believe me, that DOES happen to the most of us at some point... and very often at times I guess ..) or there's something that I've totally missed out on (because of Alzheimer, etc.).
I've uploaded the swf-fil for you to take a look at: http://mediacom-design.no/flashStuff/MiniMorris.swf
Any one have any ideas about this??
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Ah, the age old video issue. What you consider smooth is greatly affected by a lot of factors.
24FPS modern video is not allowed to pan a camera too fast. The human eye will notice the frame jumping too far for 24fps to make it look 'smooth'. The only way to move the same distance and keep it smooth is increase the FPS or make the movement lesser.
You can do up to 4 things to help you out, one is just a 'chance'. From easiest to potentially least successful:
1. Increase framerate to 60. That means the car moves less pixels per update and will "look" smoother.
2. Increase time. Move the vehicle slower over a longer time doing the same exact thing as #1, and even the opposite can work (move it insanely fast while easing it out so the user doesn't "notice" the bog)
3. Add in blur (a X-axis blur may help a bit, I'm skeptical).
4. At 30fps (minimum) it may be choaking your machine on too many hefty "MovieClips". You can lighten the load of flash so it doesn't need to render the vectors in 2 ways
   note: both of these can be done at the same time
   a) Go in the library and for every part of the car check the linkage for actionscript and change the base class of the clip from flash.display.MovieClip to flash.display.Sprite on anything without animation
   b) Set cacheAsBitmap on any part of the car that does not rotate, scale or change opacity (it can move though)
If you cacheAsBitmap, set your fps to 60 and slow down your overall movement, I'm sure it will get silky smooth.
Designers can keel over at #4 so here's a super uber quick pic to help visually:
#1 double click a library item to get symbol properties and check export for actionscript
#2 is enabled now, change MovieClip to Sprite (lot less computational overhead)
#3 shows you the color of the clip turns green (it's a Sprite!)
#4 has an INSTANCE of this clip on stage selected and is looking at the properties of it and shows you where the dropdown position for cacheAsBitmap is.

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Ale1199 wrote:
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I have stock footage (Digital Juice HD) I used 25% speed. I noticed that not rendered (green Bar on the top) looks better, animation is more smooth than after rendering. Which looks chappy.
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The problem is solved.
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Hmm... Well, this *****. It's wierd, I got it to animate succcessfully once, but only once, then I couldn't again. Just one more reason to wait for and buy 5 Universal when it comes out I suppose. Thanks for your help.
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Hi.
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code?

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2. Can I only flip views sharing the same controller?
3. Maybe someone could help me with the following issue: I have two views, and each of the views have their own controller.. the code snippet illustrates my approach.. When i start my code, the new view is added on top of the old view, and the flipping animation is animating the old view only behind the new view.. Sure, this is not what i want to have.
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sommeralex wrote:
1. is it possible to flip from view old to view new whereby each of the views have their own controller?
Yes.
2. Can I only flip views sharing the same controller?
The flip animation may be used to transition between any "old" and "new" view without regard to whether those views have different controller's, the same controller, or no controller at all.
3. Maybe someone could help me with the following issue: I have two views, and each of the views have their own controller.. the code snippet illustrates my approach.. When i start my code, the new view is added on top of the old view, and the flipping animation is animating the old view only behind the new view.. Sure, this is not what i want to have.
MapPrototypeAppDelegate *app = (MapPrototypeAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
ReadGroupsViewController *aReadGroupsViewController = app.readGroupsTableViewController;
UIWindow *window = app.window;
[UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil];
// the next line is puzzling. what is 'self.mapView', and what do you expect its superview to be? If 'self' is a
// view controller, what is the relationship between its 'view' property and its 'mapView' property? Does 'view'
// also have a superview? Is 'view' above or below 'mapView'? Is there a view between 'mapView' and the window?
[UIView setAnimationTransition: UIViewAnimationTransitionFlipFromRight forView:[self.mapView superview] cache:YES];
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// apropos the question above, what view is being covered in the next statement?
[window addSubview:[aReadGroupsViewController view]];
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I think I need a better understanding of the view hierarchy we have before aReadGroupsVC.view is added. The problem you're having is probably caused by passing the wrong view as arg here: [self.mapView superview]. But I can't say for sure since I don't know how mapView is related to the view hierarchy, and I don't know what it's superview is. It might be easier to just explain your "old" view structure and tell us how you want it to change after the flip transition.
- Ray

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<Edited by Moderator>

It was a simple fix, i did not notice the keyboard was in undock mode.

Grrr! Smooth Animation problem - AE7

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