How to continuously move an image smoothly in Pygame?

Question

Yes, I know that there are similar questions out there, and I have read through them, but they do not help me (or most likely I just don't understand them enough to use them).

FYI: I do not use classes, or anything like that.

The Problem

So what I am trying to do is make security cameras in my game. It moves/pans the image left until the image reaches the edge, waits like 1 second or something, then it moves/pans the image right until the image reaches the edge, wait 1 second or something, repeats. I have accomplished that, but the resulting animation looks jerky/laggy. I wish to make the animation smoother and less jerky/laggy.

EDIT: I also want to keep the same speed of the animation if possible

Here is my code;

if var_bounce == 0:
    if var_x <= -207:
        if var_x_timer == 10:
            var_x = var_x + 10
            var_bounce = 1
            var_x_timer = 0
        else:
            var_x_timer = var_x_timer + 1
    else:
        var_x = var_x - 10
if var_bounce == 1:
    if var_x >= 0:
        if var_x_timer == 10:
            var_x = var_x - 10
            var_bounce = 0
            var_x_timer = 0
        else:
            var_x_timer = var_x_timer + 1
    else:
        var_x = var_x + 10

Some Variables and Values Explained

• The var_x is the x value which I just place in the x value spot when I use the blit function.

  E.g. screen.blit(image, (var_x, 0))

• The var_x_timer is the timer for when it needs to wait for the 1 second or something.

  The reason why I am using the framerate of my program rather than use a timer function because 1) I did not want to sleep/delay/stop the program just for this, and 2) I don't need it to be precise when waiting.

• The var_bounce is just a way for the program to know that it has reached the edge and needs to go in the opposite direction.

• The minimum and maximum x values are 0 and -207respectively and this is so that the image still covers the entire screen. I got these values through trial and error, so no need to change those.

Other/Additional Information

• The size of my images for the security cameras is 1600 x 718

• The screen size is 1366 x 718

My Code in Action

(Ignore the other stuff)

(Looped)

Answer 1

Do not "move" the image by 10, but move it by 1.

The method tick() of a pygame.time.Clock object, delays the game in that way, that every iteration of the loop consumes the same period of time. See pygame.time.Clock.tick():

This method should be called once per frame.

That means that the loop:

var_x, var_bounce, speed_x = 0, 0, 2

# application loop
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
run = True
while run:
    clock.tick(60)

    if var_bounce == 0:
        if var_x > -207:
            var_x = var_x - speed_x 
        else:
            var_bounce = 1
    elif var_bounce == 1:
        if var_x < 0:
            var_x = var_x + speed_x 
        else:
            var_bounce = 0

    # [...]

---

Minimal example:

import pygame

pygame.init()
window = pygame.display.set_mode((400, 300))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

background = pygame.Surface((window.get_width()+200, window.get_height()))
ts, w, h, c1, c2 = 100, *background.get_size(), (64, 64, 64), (127, 64, 64)
tiles = [((x*ts, y*ts, ts, ts), c1 if (x+y) % 2 == 0 else c2) for x in range((w+ts-1)//ts) for y in range((h+ts-1)//ts)]
for rect, color in tiles:
    pygame.draw.rect(background, color, rect)

var_x, var_bounce, speed_x = 0, 0, 2

def scroll():
    global var_x, var_bounce
    if var_bounce == 0:
        if var_x > -200:
            var_x = var_x - speed_x
        else:
            var_bounce = 1
    elif var_bounce == 1:
        if var_x < 0:
            var_x = var_x + speed_x
        else:
            var_bounce = 0

run = False
while not run:
    clock.tick(60)
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            run = True

    scroll()

    window.blit(background, (var_x, 0))
    pygame.display.flip()

pygame.quit()
exit()