FPS slowing down significantly when using frame by frame animation

Question

I am developing a game for the Android platform using flash cs5 and AS3.

problem: the game will run at 24-29 fps until I call a movieClip that has frame by frame animation, then it will drop to 10-14 FPS. It looks perfect on my PC and does not lose frames until I move it to my Evo for testing. I have tested on an Epic also and I do not lose Frames which leads me to believe that it is the pixil population in the evo that is causing the problem but I have tried everything I can think of to not make it so intense on the graphics but same results every time.

It's a 20 frame animation and my FPS in flash is set to 24

What I have tried:

The only thing that actually does make it smooth is having the same image on each frame. This is why I believe it is the graphics and not the processor.

**Benchmark on PC :** 
FPS: 24/24
FPS DURING ANIMATION: 24/24

MS: 33
MS DURING ANIMATION: 33

MEMORY: 18.87
MEMORY DURING ANIMATION: 19.27

**Benchmark on Evo :** 
FPS: 24/24
FPS DURING ANIMATION: 13/24

MS: 36
MS DURING ANIMATION: 80

MEMORY: 2.931
MEMORY DURING ANIMATION: 2.993

Unknown Unknown · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-03T15:03:00

Do not use vector: it's terrible. What you need to do is use the cacheAsBitmapMatrix method, but this is available only if you're publishing using the AIR for android publish settings.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/flash/display/DisplayObject.html#cacheAsBitmap

Also a video tutorial about taking advantage of GPU acceleration on mobile/android that walks you through benchmarks and implementation:

http://gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=132

And as a last update to the answer, here is a great article comparing all these methods of drawing on the android platform + benchmarks:

http://labs.byhook.com/2011/01/13/digital-sheep-air-for-android-drawing-performance/

It discusses at length the different implementations and why some are better/worse than others.

FPS slowing down significantly when using frame by frame animation

1 Answers