SlideShowPro News

03.08.05 | Frame rate suggestion

One of the things I've noticed when seeing slide shows created by others is that nearly everyone is either not adjusting the default frame rate of their movie, or they're not setting it as high as it could be. By default, Flash MX 2004 creates new documents with a frame rate of 12fps, which is way too slow (please, Macromedia, up this). I always start with a setting of 31fps. Why? Animations are smoother, applications are more responsive, and '31' in particular has produced the most consistent cross-platform results for my work. (You can read more about the 'magic frame rate' here).

All that said, don't be afraid to push your frame rates even higher than 31 -- the online demos of SSP on this site all use 60fps. It doesn't sound logical, considering that the human eye isn't capable (or so I've heard) of detecting higher frame rates than 30 or so, but 60 adds some extra butter to the mix for a very snappy, smooth feel.

So in summary, make a habit of changing your movie's frame rate each and every time you create a new document in Flash for use with SSP or anything else.