python - Slow animation in tkinter

Question

label = Label(screen, image = "")
label.pack()
num = 0

num = 0
img = None
def animate():
    global num
    global img
    img = PhotoImage(file = "gif.gif", format = "gif -index {}".format(num))
    label.configure(image = img)
    num = (num+1)%180
    screen.after(1, animate)
animate()

screen.mainloop()

The animation itself works, but it gets slower and slower considering I put a delay of 1 millisecond. A recommended solution would be not to import other libraries, but go ahead if u know it helps.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65901181/slow-animation-in-tkinter

Answer 1

Whilst I didn't see the animation get slower, it did use a lot of memory. I found loading the frames first and then animating the image resulted in much lower memory usage, as you are not opening and processing an image every millisecond.
Here is the amended code:

label = Label(screen, image = "")
label.pack()
num = 0
img = None
frames = [PhotoImage(file = "gif.gif", format = "gif -index {}".format(num)) for num in range(180)]
def animate():
    global num
    global img
    label.configure(image = frames[num])
    num = (num+1)%180
    screen.after(100, animate)
animate()

screen.mainloop()

I would not recommend setting screen.after to 1 millisecond as this makes the gif too fast. I found 100ms was fast enough.