What do you use to composite PNG sequences with different frame rates?
Hi! I'm hoping this isn't one of those generic "what's the best software?" questions. My situation is pretty specific, and I feel like I'm missing a piece of the animation pipeline that experienced animators probably already have solved.
I've been animating for quite a while, but mostly just for myself. Because of that, I never had to think much about compositing or building a proper workflow I just used the built-in animation tools in my drawing software and kept everything simple.
Now I want to start making short, high-quality animations for YouTube and TikTok on a regular basis (around 20–30 seconds each), and I'm trying to find the right software for the compositing stage.
Here's my workflow:
- I animate frame-by-frame in ibis Paint.
- I export PNG sequences (often with transparent backgrounds for the characters).
- The background and foreground are animated separately.
- I then want to move the characters and/or the camera with simple keyframes.
The part that makes this difficult is that I intentionally animate different elements at different frame rates.
For example:
- Character animation: 13 fps
- Background animation: 12 fps
- Camera movement: smooth (e.g. 60 fps)
I don't want to manually duplicate frames or calculate frame holds for every image. Ideally, I'd like to import each image sequence, tell the software "this sequence plays at 13 fps" and "this one plays at 12 fps," and then just animate their positions with keyframes.
I tried looking into DaVinci Resolve, but it seems to assume one timeline frame rate for everything, which doesn't seem to fit this workflow.
I'm not looking for a new drawing or animation program. I'm happy doing all the frame-by-frame animation in ibis Paint. I just need a compositor that makes this last step simple and repeatable.
What software would you recommend for this workflow? I'd especially love to hear what people making independent 2D animations or music-synced YouTube animations actually use.