Help! Anime Studio is a buggy mess!

[Pinesal]

Many times when I start an animation, it get to a point where the program lags soo bad that I can't even us it anymore.

I am working on a cartoon now where the save file won't open at all in 32-bit mode, the program just closes without warning before even loading the project.

If I try in 64-bit mode the project opens but I I have to wait 15 seconds before and after changing even the smallest thing. Even scrolling the layer window will cause the program to freeze for about 15 seconds before it will me do anything else.

My project is not even 60 seconds long yet. I have disable all layers except the walls of the room and the two characters in the scene and I changed the preview setting to LOW. I have a reasonably powerful PC with 8GB ram.I don't know what else I can do.

[jezjones29]

I suggest you contact smith micro support.
But can you share anything that we can test here? Are you importing large files/images?

[ErikAtMapache]

I've only seen this behavior when working with a large number of image files (importing hundreds of files for frame-by-frame). The behavior you are describing sounds like a memory problem - the computer is moving a lot of bytes around and it's just taking a long time. If you are using image files as part of your project, it may also be that they are just too large so that could be slowing things down. Another thing you can do is bring up Task Manager and see if you are running out of memory because of other programs that are running (in Windows right-click on the task bad and select "Start Task Manager").

It's very important you open a ticket with Smith Micro so that they are aware of this issue (make sure you give them your saved file with the problem). They can't fix it if they don't know about it.

[Pinesal]

I am working with a very large number of image files and textures. Is the software not built to handle that?

[sbtamu]

It is not the software it is your computer.

[Pinesal]

It is not the software it is your computer.

What about computer is it?

I have an ATI HD5770 1GB
8GB ram
2.4 Ghz Quad Core processor.

It's not a bad machine.

[AmigaMan]

You state in your original post that your "project is not even 60 seconds long". 60 seconds is very long and a huge file for the computer to cope with. Do you not do each shot separately and compile in editing software? I've never had a file in Anime Studio that was more than 10 seconds long.

[slowtiger]

It's not strong enough for this task. I work on a MacPro Quadcore 3GHz with 16GB RAM and a special graphic card, and still I have to split projects if they are heavy with images and video files.

The architecture of AS is laid out in such a way that the program creates a preview from each linked asset (image or video) befor it reacts to user input again - and this happens every time you go to a different frame. This works reasonably fast up to, say, 20 - 50 images or 5 - 10 videos. But if the number of assets is in the hundreds, the program gets slowed down drastically. It is an animation program, not a cmpositing program, although it manages even this task surprisingly well.

What I do is to switch off visibility of everything I don't have to see right now (in the layer panel), or see if I can "mix down" several layers into one and re-import as one video or image file.

[Pinesal]

Maybe I am approching creation in the wrong way. I do break up my projects and edit together in post but I have been until this project, creating clips that could be as long as 3 minutes and then chopping them up in editing.

I had no idea that the majority of people are working in ten second increments, I shall try a different workflow and see if it makes any difference in the future,

[Danimal]

I had no idea that the majority of people are working in ten second increments

I don't, but I admittedly don't use many images and keep my scenes pretty simple. Sparse, even. Still, those 3 or 4 minute clips I render out have been known to take hours.

[Genete]

I had no idea that the majority of people are working in ten second increments

Unless you have a very clear storyboard of the whole animation, work with more than ten seconds is a nightmare when you need to insert or remove time in the middle.
-G

[AmigaMan]

Well not 10 second increments as such but you will probably find that most people work on every shot individually in Anime Studio. I only said 10 seconds because I don't think I've had a shot last any longer than that. I have a separate folder on my computer for each shot and everything related to that shot is in the relative folder. The final render (.png images) is saved to another folder in there named 'Shot_024', for example, and that folder can be dragged to the timeline in my editing software. If I need to add any post effects then I work on each shot individually again and save to another folder named 'Shot_024_FX' before dropping it into the timeline of the editing software.