There is a very annoying glitch in Pencil2d that takes random frames from my animations and moves their location. for example in a walking animation I made some time ago a frame from the middle of the walk cycle moved to 1/3 of the walk cycle. This glitch is very annoying and it is killing my joy in using pencil2d. Do you have a solution?
Thanks for reading!
@Animator123 Hi. Sorry to hear you’re experiencing issues with Pencil2D.
Hmm after reading your description, if this is happening to you quite often I must ask you if it’s possible to record a video of this issue since it’s quite honestly baffling and I’ve never heard reports related to this. Pencil2D does not do this by itself either.
If it’s possible for you not only record the video showing how it happens, but also try to track your steps and make a comprehensive list of what do you do exactly before and after this issue happens. As long as we can find a consistent pattern to reproduce the problem, we can definitely ask the devs to help us fix this.
Additionally please leave a written description of your computer specs by going to Help > About > Copy To Clipboard and paste the clipboard information on your reply.
Meanwhile we wait for more info, for now I have to consider external influence that could cause this problem for you so hopefully some of the troubleshooting steps can help to ease your experience.
The first viable way I can think for this to happen, is that the working file directory that is used during the work session is being mishandled by the operating system or a third party app (i.e if you open Pencil2D and work in any given file, a set of resources are created in your OS temporary folder)
We’ve had reports from people losing their work after saving because they had third party “cleaning” apps, regularly mess up the temp folder along Pencil2D project raw files while they were working.
Workaround For this potential issue, please try saving your work as a PCL file by going to File > Saves As > Save As Type - Legacy Pencil2D Project (*pcl) this is an “open folder” filetype for your project, it will save on your chosen location a pcl file and a .data folder with all the resources. Both parts always have to be near each other for Pencil2D to work properly, so keep that in mind.
There used to be a bug where frames were lost, not “moved” so this couldn’t be the reason, besides it was fixed in earlier versions 
Workaround For this please check that you’re using the absolute latest version of the app found at the official site Download | Pencil2D Animation
You could also try the latest development build at Nightly Builds | Pencil2D Animation
The latter builds can work alongside any version you have deployed on your system, of course these versions are unstable wth new features and have more stability with old features, so you still need to save backups manually just in case.
A third possibility is that your RAM is not enough for handling your current project, either because you have a huge resolution size, or because you have a lot of frames or layers, or all of them.
We’ve had cases of people with little amount of RAM where their drawings dissappear from the canvas, however they are perfectly fine in the actual file.
That said this wouldn’t move frames randomly 
however
Workaround Please check that if you have less than 4GB of RAM then try to close all apps before using Pencil2D, and try to keep individual shots / scenes in separate (and just in case please don’t try to make a 5 minute animation in a single file, not even in commercially available apps 
)
IF you’re using a graphics tablet, take care that your tablet touch inputs and stylus inputs are properly configured, it could happen that when working you are inadvertently moving the frames because the tablet is “too sensitive” I’ve had that happen to me in other apps at least, so it’s a possibility, due to that experience I personally disable everything related to touch features.
Note: Speaking of stylus it’s possible you also need to configure the hardware using an application profile specifically for Pencil2D. I use a Wacom Intuos 5 and I had to disable the “middle click” because this can glitch Pencil2D when trying to move the canvas.
Of course that little problem was fixed in the development builds (AFAIK) but if you’re using the website download, it should be an issue. Along that I also had to configure Windows Ink properly and use that instead of the default Wacom driver, so using the “turn windows ink off” won’t work well with Pencil2D.
If you want read this guide to configure Windows Ink properly along other suggestions and guides to improve the Windows experience. Animation Frame Disaster - #2 by JoseMoreno
If you have a mac though, then I’m afraid your graphics tablet compat will depend mostly on the OSX version you’re using anything post Catalina with the M1 chip might not be fully compatible 
If I think of any other thing I’ll let you know. Please share with us a more thorough description of how this issue occurs to you when you have time.
More information is probably needed, but I will add one more obvious possibility. If you are creating/duplicating keyframes near the start of your walk cycle (for instance), and then moving them to the right over your existing keyframes, the keyframes you move over will be offset to the left one. Conceptually moving is handled as if you are removing that frame from the layer and adding a frame at the position you dropped it. So keyframes before between the start and end positions of your move will be shift by one so that frames outside of the start and end positions remain in the same position. Not understanding how frame moving works could give you the impression that random frames are moving their location.
The solution to this is to pay more attention to where you create your frames, and how you move them. If they get offset, you can select all frames that were offset and move them together. There are likely going to be changes to this behavior in future versions of Pencil2D to make it more user friendly, but until then that’s what you’ve got to do if that’s your problem.
I’ve experienced this when moving a layer re the animation area. When this has happened to me, I’ve had frames selected, I.e. the frame area inside the frame box in the layer was coloured black.
I had changed the working layer, by clicking on the layer selector on the left hand end of the timeline.
The layer moved when I scrubbed the timeline, at the point where I passed the selected frame, on the layer not selected.
The problem did not affect the .gif or .mp4 filed when exported.
It stopped happening when the incorrectly selected frames were deselected.
The movement were somehow linked to these frames, when played using the playbutton within the edit mode!
Thank you for your feedback, we’ll look into this issue again to determine what could be causing the issue and then ask developers to intervene when the testing team figures out how to reproduce this issue consistently.