H.264 MP4 exported loop lag/hiccup when played back

hello, so i posted this loop on reddit and people in the comments were saying there’s a pause in the loop, i can’t really see it but i was wondering if anyone here can see it and help fix it. Thanks in advance
https://gfycat.com/untriedbotharctichare-perfect-loop-render-marble-arc4g-b3d
https://gfycat.com/dimanguishedchrysalis-perfect-loop-render-marbl
Here’s the blend file with every single rendered frame

And here’s the reddit discussion. someone is saying it’s the gif host
https://www.reddit.com/r/perfectloops/comments/cl7tud/marble_roll_a_oc/evtnxop/

and here’s the video i uploaded to gfycat https://mega.nz/#!xJ0QhQrB!E6YFU_1mby9O1XcHVrzAvsEc9rnm0vC5lkSy6BumrGU

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Yes, there is a pause/shift. If you focus at the legs of the structure, you see it more clear.

Does it exist in the blend file or just the gif after it was uploaded? Also when looking at the legs you can notice the reflections not looping, maybe the reflections are giving the illusion of a pause

I don’t think it’s the reflection. I wanted to check if there is a flaw for the animation itself and I’m confused how you did it, there is no keyframe for location on ball?

The lights, floor, sphere are all parented to the camera and follow it

Allright, the setup looks fine for me and it loops perfectly in viewport, so there might be something related to exporting but I’m not sure. Let’s hope someone with better understanding of these animations will look into this :slight_smile:

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I think it might be the host of the gif but i can’t confirm

I think it’s not, because I can see the pause/shift in my media player as well.

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hmm so we narrowed it down to the video export.

i hope someone will look into the blend file and tell me what’s causing the issue with the export because i just discovered that all my loop projects have this issue. I really need to know what’s the source of this problem so i can make sure it never happens again

It looks to me as though the sudden appearance of the shadow from the “track” creates the illusion of a shift.

I found a year old forum post that was having the same issue with loops that I was having but instead of blender he was using Adobe after effect


Thread https://forums.adobe.com/message/10551958#10551958

long story short, don’t export using mp4 in blender if you want a seamless loop

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That’s interesting. Maybe it’s a bug and can be fixed? Please try to report it and see what developers say.

After further testing its not blender or H.264 MP4 fault. seamless loops are highly dependent on the player you’re using to play them, some players handle them really well and some don’t

For example the reddit video player has a hiccup/short pause when playing H.264 MP4 loops so the only workaround currently is to convert your loop to a gif before uploading it to reddit. And no you can’t use reddit built-in gif converter, because that breaks it too. You need to convert it first before uploading it using something like https://ezgif.com/video-to-gif but you’ll lose a lot of quality and 60fps still better than having a laggy loop

the same problem happens if you upload H.264 MP4 to gfycat.com or imgur.com then post it to reddit, the hiccup/short pause will still happen especially on the official reddit app. you can make the hiccup less obvious on gfycat.com by converting the H.264 MP4 to a VP8 .webm first. you still get a slight hiccup but it’s much better than straight mp4 to gfycat and you still keep 60fps unlike the gif method

For Instagram the easiest method is to repeat the loop 8 or 10 times so you have a 30 or 40 second loop and the hiccup only happen every 40 seconds or how long your video is

TLDR: video players on websites/apps don’t handle short H.264 MP4 loops very well especially on mobile

i hope this information is useful for someone. It took me a week to figure all of this out

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The loop is perfect throughout the whole workflow in blender. The problem seems to be the video players on website/apps

Those are the tests (the differences are more obvious on the official reddit mobile app)
https://www.reddit.com/r/arc4g/comments/cotkdv/h264_mp4_straight_upload_to_reddit_player/

https://www.reddit.com/r/arc4g/comments/cotkxh/h264_mp4_converted_to_gif_before_uploading_not/
https://www.reddit.com/r/arc4g/comments/cotls3/h264_mp4_straight_to_gfycat/
https://www.reddit.com/r/arc4g/comments/cotmn1/h264_mp4_converted_to_vp8_webm_before_upload_to/

Can someone confirm my hypothesis?