Frame Skipping Test — Is Your Display Dropping Frames?
A numbered grid lights one square per frame in strict sequence. If your display chain skips frames, some numbers never light — visible to a camera on a long exposure, and tracked live by the tool itself.
Preparing the sequence…
How the frame skipping test works
Most display tests measure timing; this one measures completeness. The grid above contains sixty numbered squares, and on every frame the browser presents, exactly one square lights — the one matching the frame counter. Over a full cycle every number from 1 to 60 takes its turn. A healthy chain shows all of them. A chain that skips frames — an overclocked panel dropping every twentieth frame, a capture card discarding frames it cannot process, a scaler that cannot keep up — leaves holes in the sequence, and holes are much easier to prove than a feeling that motion looks wrong.
The tool reports the browser side automatically: it counts every frame it presents and confirms the sequence advances without gaps. That covers everything up to the moment the frame leaves the browser. The final step, inside the panel itself, needs the camera method, because no web page can see what a panel physically did with a frame after receiving it. Honesty about that boundary matters more than a fake all-in-one claim, so both methods are here and each says exactly what it can and cannot prove.
How to run the camera check
- Put the test in fullscreen and dim the room lights.
- Set a camera or phone to its longest exposure or slowest shutter — a night-mode or long-exposure app works well.
- Photograph the grid while it runs for at least one full cycle.
- Examine the photo: every number should appear lit roughly equally. Missing or much dimmer numbers are skipped frames.
- If you find skips, remove any monitor overclock or custom resolution first and repeat at the panel's rated rate.
What causes frame skipping?
The classic cause is enthusiasm: a custom resolution pushing a 60Hz panel to 75Hz, where the panel's scaler quietly discards the extra frames instead of showing them — you get the input lag of neither and the smoothness of 60Hz with holes. Capture and streaming chains are the second cause, when a card rated for 60 frames per second is fed 120. The third is bandwidth: a cable or dock at the edge of its specification dropping to a lower link rate under load. In every case the fix is the same discipline — return to rated settings, confirm a clean run here, then change one variable at a time. If frames are arriving but arriving late and unevenly instead, that is stutter, and the stutter test graph will show it directly.
Frequently asked questions
What is frame skipping?
Frame skipping is when a display fails to show one of the frames it was sent — the image jumps forward by two steps at once. It happens with some overclocked monitor settings, faulty scalers, and certain capture or streaming chains.
How does the camera method work?
Photograph the test grid with a long exposure or slow shutter while it runs. Every square lights once per cycle in sequence; numbers missing from the photo are frames your display chain skipped.
Can a browser detect skipping automatically?
Partly. The tool tracks every frame the browser presents and confirms the sequence lights without gaps from the page's side. A skip that happens inside the panel itself is only visible to the camera method — which is why both are offered and the limits are stated plainly.
Is frame skipping the same as stutter?
They are cousins. Stutter is late frames arriving unevenly; skipping is frames that never appear at all. The stutter test shows late frames on a graph; this test hunts for missing ones.
What setting most often causes skipping?
Monitor overclocking — running a panel above its rated rate through a custom resolution. If this test finds skips, drop the overclock first and test again at the rated rate.