Frame rate drop or network issue?

[mannuoye]

I have watched numerous YouTube videos of other people’s shows. One issue I do not want to face.
In some videos, when animations/effects move very quickly, I can see lights dropping. For example, a set of 4 LEDs moving left and right in Arches, at slow rate, it is smoother but if tempo of song is too high and they are skipping leds.
Anyone else noticed this?
is it avoidable? i think yes. Some of the videos things are moving extremely quickly with no skipping.
I don’t know. Its Sunday, I am bored and overthinking.

 

[merryoncherry]

Yes, if you have a narrow effect that moves a long distance quickly, it won't look smooth unless the frame rate is high. For these cases (and few other things), 20FPS isn't always enough to look good, and 40 is better. A few people do 100FPS.

It does put more requirements on the controller to do more FPS... and also reduces the number of pixels you can run in one string... 32,000 divided by the number of pixels is your max frame rate (assuming the controller supports driving the pixels that way), so 32,000 / 40FPS = ~800 pixels per port max. To do 100FPS you'd be limited to about 300.

 

[Skymaster]

Don't forget as well that despite the show running at 40fps, most recordings are at 24, 25, 29.97 or 30fps. Nothing is a multiple of 40. So therefore the video frame rates will never match the pixel rates.
As such, the the video may look choppier than it is in person due to frames being misaligned.

 

[mannuoye]

Yes, if you have a narrow effect that moves a long distance quickly, it won't look smooth unless the frame rate is high. For these cases (and few other things), 20FPS isn't always enough to look good, and 40 is better. A few people do 100FPS.

It does put more requirements on the controller to do more FPS... and also reduces the number of pixels you can run in one string... 32,000 divided by the number of pixels is your max frame rate (assuming the controller supports driving the pixels that way), so 32,000 / 40FPS = ~800 pixels per port max. To do 100FPS you'd be limited to about 300.

Thank you, you said exactly what I needed to confirm/know.
i am sure many other factors play their part in to bringing it all together to run it smoothly but staying on frame rate topic, I think 60 FPS should be fast enough.

 

[Indigogyre]

Don't forget as well that despite the show running at 40fps, most recordings are at 24, 25, 29.97 or 30fps. Nothing is a multiple of 40. So therefore the video frame rates will never match the pixel rates.
As such, the the video may look choppier than it is in person due to frames being misaligned.

Thank you, you said exactly what I needed to confirm/know.
i am sure many other factors play their part in to bringing it all together to run it smoothly but staying on frame rate topic, I think 60 FPS should be fast enough.

I had this exact problem with the show running at 40 FPS and the recordings at 30 FPS. I noticed that there were frame drops and lags while recording that did not match what I could see with my eye. Along those same lines I started looking for a camera that can record at 60 FPS and meet some other needs.

 

[merryoncherry]

Yes, there are other factors at play to making sure it is smooth (in person; as others point out the recording may not accurately represent how it really looks). The sending software has to deliver the packets to the network smoothly, and the network has to have the bandwidth and not drop them, etc.

One other thing, I am not sure xLights will do "60FPS". You have to pick a frame time in ms, and that has to be an integer. So you can have 20, 40, 50, 100 FPS, and 62.5 FPS, things like that. Another thing I know is that a small number of xLights effects/features behave on a frame basis, so they appear to speed up as the frame rate increases.