Sure, take utilt for example.
TL;DR 45 committed frames to utilt (IASA on frame 46), 2nd hit hits on frames 7-8. Frames 9-45 = 37 frames of cooldown.
In the
chart, hitframes = the frames on which the move has a hitbox. Utilt has hitframes 3-4 for 5 different hitboxes, and if you look at this pic you'll see the first hit does have 5 hitboxes
(Taken from
here)
Now obv you can see in the chart that each hitbox deals 5%. So if a big character like DK is in the perfect spot so that his hurtbox overlaps with all 5 hitboxes, why isn't he taking 30%?
Cause that's not how the game is coded. If you look in the 'hitbox ID' column of the spreadsheet, you'll see each hitbox has a different number ranging from 0-4. Any move performed by 1 character that generates multiple hitboxes on the same frames will have these IDs. These IDs assign a scale of precedence to each hitbox. This may be incorrect, but what I was told is that the hitbox with the lower ID will take precendence over any other hitboxes. What that means is that, out of all the hitboxes that are overlapping with the opponent's hurtboxes, the one with the lowest ID will be the one that connects, and that hitbox's damage, knockback, and knockback angle will be dealt. This applies to every move for every character btw.
Anyway, back to the simple stuff. The first hit of utilt is on frames 3-4. The 2nd hit of utilt is on frames 7-8, and it has 2 hitboxes according to the chart.
Again, the pic shows this is true.
The total animation length of utilt is 56 according to the spreadsheet, but that's not what matters for this move. I'm pretty sure you already know what IASA is, but if you don't (or for other readers), the frames before the IASA is basically the 'practical' frames of a move - the frames of a move you are committed to. It stands for "Interruptible As Soon As". Utilt has IASA frames starting on 46, meaning that on frame 46 or onwards, you can cancel the move's animation with another animation (another move, shield, dodge, whatever..any input basically). It also means that the buffer window is the last 10 frames before the IASA frames,
not the last 10 frames before the animation ends.
If you're wondering why this exists, I don't know. It just basically means that all the IASA frames are purely cosmetic/aesthetic. A good example is Marth's dtilt; a huge chunk of the animation is IASA frames, just put in there because they wanted it to be a quick attack, but they obviously needed to include an animation that shows him standing back up after crouching to perform the dtilt.
For moves that don't have IASA listed, then the entire animation is what you're concerned with for finding out the cooldown of a move.
Anyway, to recap and finally answer your question, utilt1 hits on 3-4, utilt2 hits on frames 7-8, and the practical length of the animation is 45 frames. This should be obvious, but
usually the 2nd hit of utilt is going to connect on frame 7 of the animation, and not on frame 8. This is because the hitboxes are in the exact same location on both frames, so the only way it would connect on frame 8 but
not on frame 7 is if
1) The opponent was moving towards you so precisely that their hurtboxes didn't overlap with the utilt hitboxes on frame 7, but they did on frame 8. This includes janky ass hurtbox positioning involved with performing attacks, walking, running, crouching, etc. I think you can see why this wouldn't happen often.
2) The opponent was in the middle of a dodge (or another invincible animation), and the last frame of invincibility coincided with frame 7 of your utilt, so frame 8 of your utilt coincided with the first vulnerable frame of the animation they were in. Also not very likely to happen.
This means that from frames 9-45 (or 8-45 if one of the 2 aforementioned situations occurs), you're completely vulnerable, so yeah the cooldown of this move is 37-38 frames. This is
different from frame (dis)advantage on shield, cause that also involves values like hitlag, shieldlag and shieldstun.
unnecessarilylonganswersareunnecessarilylong
