Animation jargon

[Rhino]

I'm working with animations and I'm trying to think of a good name for a
variable that a user can specify when creating a viewer for an animation.
Ideally, the meaning of the name will be self-explanatory and will conform
with common usage among people who use animations.

As you know, an animation is just a set of still pictures which are
displayed sequentially (often in a loop) to give the appearance of motion.
When I display the animation, I can make the time that each frames is
projected very long, making the action appear to move slowly, or I can
project the still for a short time, making the action take place very
quickly. Alternatively, I can think of the animation as being projected at
so many frames per second, where a higher number means the animation will
move quickly and a lower number means the animation will move slowly.

How do "real" animators, people who have studied the subject in school for
example, generally think of animation speed: is it the number of seconds
that each still is projected before moving on to the next? Or is the number
of frames viewed per second?

I've heard the term "frame rate" a few times and suspect that it refers to
the number of frames that are viewed each second but I'm not sure if that is
common usage or if I am correctly understanding its usage. Also, I'm not
sure if that is a term only used by people who are largely ignorant of
animation or if it is actually a term preferred by professionals.

One other related matter. I'd like to set a default value for this variable,
whatever it will eventually be called, frameRate or animationSpeed or
whatever. Is there any general concensus on a standard speed for animations?
In other words, if someone handed you an animated GIF without telling you
fast it should play, how fast would you play it? (I was a little surprised
to find that animated GIFs apparently don't include this information in the
file somewhere.) By experimenting a bit, I've found that 5 frames per second
seems a good comfortable speed but maybe that's just a personal taste
thing....

 

[Roedy Green]

How do "real" animators, people who have studied the subject in school for
example, generally think of animation speed: is it the number of seconds
that each still is projected before moving on to the next? Or is the number
of frames viewed per second?

if you don't get a better answer, the Java term is "clip".

 

[Rhino]

if you don't get a better answer, the Java term is "clip".

Huh? Isn't a "clip" a fragment of film, i.e. a few frames of an animation?
I'm asking about the SPEED at which the animation is shown, which is an
entirely different thing.

Rhino

 

[Pete Barrett]

How do "real" animators, people who have studied the subject in school for
example, generally think of animation speed: is it the number of seconds
that each still is projected before moving on to the next? Or is the number
of frames viewed per second?

If you want to know how animators think, wouldn't it be better to ask
in a newsgroup that deals with animation, rather than a general Java
programming one? There may be a few trained animators here, but there
are bound to be more there.

Pete Barrett

 

[Rhino]

If you want to know how animators think, wouldn't it be better to ask
in a newsgroup that deals with animation, rather than a general Java
programming one? There may be a few trained animators here, but there
are bound to be more there.

Fair enough. Do you know of such a newsgroup?

Mind you, this is such a basic question that I assume that someone here
could answer it....

Rhino

 

[Andrew Thompson]

Rhino wrote:
....

..(I was a little surprised
to find that animated GIFs apparently don't include this information in the
file somewhere.)

Sure they do (can). a Java based GIF writing library I
used recently (as well as Win based GIF writers) have the
ability to set the animation delay.

It is important to be able to set it. A lot of gif's used
for ads use a very slow rate, to become more like a slideshow.
They would be illegible at 5 frames per second.

 

[Roedy Green]

Huh? Isn't a "clip" a fragment of film, i.e. a few frames of an animation?
I'm asking about the SPEED at which the animation is shown, which is an
entirely different thing.

FPS Frames per second

 

[Pete Barrett]

Fair enough. Do you know of such a newsgroup?

comp.graphics.animation looks promising. My ISP also carries
rec.arts.animation and rec.arts.disney.animation (presumably Disney
animation is different<g>). Note that I've never looked at any of
these, not being interested in the details of animation; and there may
be other and better ones which my ISP doesn't carry.

Mind you, this is such a basic question that I assume that someone here
could answer it....

I don't see why - you're interested in the subject, so to you it seems
basic, but most programmers probably deal with other things. Sure,
most of us have probably animated a picture at some time in our lives,
but that doesn't mean we've gone into the theory of animation and
learnt the jargon. Anyone who's written an animation *program* (which
I suppose is what you're doing) probably has, but how many of those
are there?


Pete Barrett

 

[Rhino]

Rhino wrote:
...

Sure they do (can). a Java based GIF writing library I
used recently (as well as Win based GIF writers) have the
ability to set the animation delay.

There's a world of difference between having the _ability_ to store the
information and a _requirement_ that it be there somewhere.

Furthermore, I don't see anything in the ImageIO that lets you get the
"frame rate" or "animation speed" or whatever it is properly called. Mind
you, I'm looking at the getters and fields in the ImageIO and ImageReader
classes; perhaps there is a different way to obtain that information. I have
displayed the metadata on some animated GIFs as well and didn't see the
information there; perhaps I missed it since there is quite a bit of
information displayed. If you know how I can determine what the animation
creator's intended speed was, I'd love to hear it.

It is important to be able to set it. A lot of gif's used
for ads use a very slow rate, to become more like a slideshow.
They would be illegible at 5 frames per second.

There _should_ be some way for the creator of the animation to store the
intended speed in a standard way and for software to obtain this information
in a standard way. But does this actually exist in the real world? Does the
GIF file format have a specific field to specify the intended"speed" of an
animation?

Rhino

 

[Andrew Thompson]

Rhino wrote:

(big snip)

..But does this actually exist in the real world?

Sure does. As I alluded to in my post which was *not*
referring to Java's core ImageIO classes.

The AnimatedGifEncoder class from fmsware.com* not only allows
you to set the delay between frames, it also allows you to set
the delay rate different for *each* frame.

Though I have not yet tested the latter ability (no defined need),
I had previously used the class to create animated GIF's with
a variety of frame delay rates.

Now stop p*ssing about with classes that don't do what you
want, and at least experiment with classes that (I guess) do!

[ * As mentioned in Marco Schmidt's library list..
<http://www.fmsware.com/stuff/gif.html> ]

 

[Roedy Green]

Furthermore, I don't see anything in the ImageIO that lets you get the
"frame rate" or "animation speed" or whatever it is properly called

that is considered "metadata". That might help you find the magic
incantation.

 

[Andrew Thompson]

Rhino wrote:
....


Sure they do (can). a Java based GIF writing library I
used recently (as well as Win based GIF writers) have the
ability to set the animation delay.

Vis. <http://www.physci.org/giffer/>

Try the version of gifferNNNN.jnlp that uses the most
RAM your PC can offer. The UI (written by myself, duhh..)
does not provide access to some of the functionality of
the AnimatedGifEncoder class of FM Software, but it allows
you to set the frame delay rate.

<standard disclaimer>
It is very beta.
</standard disclaimer>

<LZW disclaimer>
If Unisys comes a knockin', ya' never heard of me, ..OK? ;-)
</LZW disclaimer>

 

[Andrew Thompson]

Andrew Thompson wrote: ...

Vis. <http://www.physci.org/giffer/>

(cough, cough) ..or, at least, this update (v 0.1) that
actually checks the user settings prior to writing the
GIF does.

The earlier version was hard coded to 1000 msec delay and
1 repeat. F1 for further details.