Timeframe (granularity)

A timeframe, or granularity, is the rule that decides when one bar closes and the next opens: a fixed duration for time bars, or a count of ticks, contracts, price range or delta for the other bar types. Every per-bar value on a chart, including delta and the bar's point of control, depends on that rule.

Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026

One word, several bar rules

  • Time bars: a fixed duration such as 1 minute or 1 hour; comparable across sessions, thin overnight and crowded at the open.
  • Tick bars: a fixed number of trades; the feed's aggregation of prints changes what one tick means.
  • Volume bars: a fixed number of contracts; a bar closes faster when activity rises.
  • Range bars: a fixed price range; quiet periods produce few bars.
  • Delta bars: a fixed net of ask volume minus bid volume; they require the aggressor side.

What changes with the choice

The granularity fixes the window of every per-bar statistic. Bar delta, the bar's point of control, an imbalance count and any oscillator are recomputed from scratch when the bar rule changes, so a signal observed on 500-tick bars has no defined value on 5-minute bars. The session anchor is a separate setting: it decides where session-based series such as cumulative delta reset, whatever the bar rule. Both should be written down with the contract before any comparison between charts, as the NQ and MNQ guide recommends.

In Senzoukria

The chart workspace has a Timeframe control. One minute to one hour are pinned; the grain menu next to them lists time, tick, volume, range and delta bars, and a star pins the grains used most. The tour names this area Timeframes and bar types. A sound can be assigned to Timeframe changed in Settings.

On the Quantower bridge the chart timeframe in Quantower does not matter, because the bridge requests tick history for the symbol itself and the desktop rebuilds bars at whatever grain is selected. For deep Binance history, the settings hint suggests 30m or higher for display, since candles at that depth are imported progressively and kept on disk.

Common mistakes

  • Comparing a bar count across feeds that aggregate prints differently.
  • Changing the timeframe and reading the new cumulative delta curve as if the session boundary had also moved; it did not.
  • Backtesting a rule on one granularity and deploying it on another.
  • Choosing a small timeframe on a long history window and treating the slow load as a data problem; a week of 1-minute footprint is a large number of ticks.

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Frequently asked questions

Which timeframe is right for a footprint chart?
There is no universal answer; the bar rule should match the question being asked. Time bars keep sessions comparable, tick and volume bars adapt to activity, range bars remove time altogether. The NQ and MNQ guide suggests fixing contract, session and aggregation first, then keeping a chosen grain long enough to count what it produces.
Does changing the timeframe change cumulative delta?
The per-bar delta values change because the bars change, but the cumulative session curve is anchored to the session boundary, not the bar rule. If the curve looks different after a timeframe switch, check whether the session anchor was also changed; a different boundary means a different curve.

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