How to control the frame rate for WPF animations

Animations are very cool, but they can cause a high CPU load. One reason could be a missing hardware acceleration due to a old graphics adapter or a software rendering constraint. Another reason could be the the high frame rate of animations that is set to 60 fps by default.

You can easily lower the framerate for all animations by overriding the DesiredFrameRate property of the timeline. Just add the following code to your project and play around with the setting to find a good tradeoff between performance and aesthetic.

 
Timeline.DesiredFrameRateProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(Timeline),
   new FrameworkPropertyMetadata { DefaultValue = 30 });
 
 

Or you can set the framerate individually for each animation in XAML, using the following code:

 
<DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" Duration="0:0:0.5" 
                 From="1.0" To="0.5" Timeline.DesiredFrameRate="30" />
 
 

 Comments on this article

karthik	Commented on 4.February 2010 Good tutorial for WPF
RomanK	Commented on 1.March 2010 Thank you for this. And seeing it's defined by a property, we can even define this individually for animations (e.g. to make soft animations smoother or reduce CPU load on fast animations). In XAML this can look like this: <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" Duration="0:0:0.5" From="1.0" To="0.5" Timeline.DesiredFrameRate="30" /> Why not add this to your tutorial?
Christian Moser	Commented on 2.March 2010 Thanks Roman! I added your XAML example.
Atul Raina	Commented on 28.March 2010 Adjusting frame rates was always a mess for me being a novice flash programmer , the way you expressed the topic out here would help me in getting through. Thanks a lot and your knowledge share is appreciating
Iyappan Mani	Commented on 24.July 2010 Nice tutorial
3bdeen tb3n	Commented on 25.July 2010 klam zy el fol wallahy , ana msh 3aref a2olko eh > < ento nas zy el fol , 5llo balko mn nfsko w isa htb2o 7d kowyes
3bdeen tb3n	Commented on 25.July 2010 klam zy el fol wallahy , ana msh 3aref a2olko eh > < ento nas zy el fol , 5llo balko mn nfsko w isa htb2o 7d kowyes
Qualitatserz...	Commented on 11.August 2010 Does a round gauge control (controls for WPF) uses animation to move the indicator??? thanks
MOSER	Commented on 23.August 2010 I apprieciate your feedback but I cant explain it anymore in depth because I just copy and pasted this from another website
MOSEY	Commented on 23.August 2010 I apprieciate your feedback but I cant explain it anymore in depth because I just copy and pasted this from another website