Using movies in animations which are exported as SWF files

[nickharambee]

Hi

I am wondering if there is any way of using a movie in an animation such that it can be rendered in an SWF file. I am aware that there are more limitations exporting to SWF, but want to use this format as the animation is for a webpage.

I have just one short movie that I would like to use. If there is no movie format supported, is there a way of importing as an image sequence?

Failing this can I render the animation without the movie and then add the movie later using Flash CS4?

Thanks

Nick

[slowtiger]

render the animation without the movie and then add the movie later using Flash CS4

That's exactly the way to go. The SWF format doesn't contain video files, those have to be encoded as FLV and be called from the SWF.

AS cannot encode video files to FLV.

[nickharambee]

thanks. onto flash CS4 it is then.

i have successfully imported my movie in FLV format into a flash file in Flash CS4, and it is added as a layer in the timeline.

But when I try to import the SWF file generated by ASP to the stage Flash CS4 crashes. I can import other SWF files to the stage without any problem.

Any idea what the issue might be?

[nickharambee]

as an addendum, i exported another version of my animation as SWF, checking the 'variable line widths' option, and I could import it to the stage in Flash CS4 OK. Not sure if doing so was significant, but it worked!

The next difficulty is that Flash CS4 doesn't appear to preserve the visibility settings from ASP as all layers show all the way through.

I haven't been able to test what shows up in the final SWF file exported from Flash CS4 as it is freezing half way through the export process.

Does anyone have any recommendations for getting this to work?

thanks

Nick

[slowtiger]

You need to take care about what AS is able to translate into SWF and what not.

Not (this is also listed n the manual's appendix):
- masks
- brushes
- any fill effect (gradient, texture etc)
- any layer effects (blur, shadows etc)
- video

Flash will import that SWF and create a key for every frame in timeline, regardless of how many keys you created in AS. If you're on a file size critical mission, you need careful planning and a lot of manual outweeding in Flash.

If you see a red dot on your vector layer then this layer will be treated as only one symbol in Flash. Do any point motion or layer movement other than straight scaling or rotating around z and the dot vanishes, creating a new symbol for each frame in Flash, thus blowing up file size.

When I tested last, the temporary visibility setting of layers was respected during export to SWF, so I was able to export any portion of the file separately.

Masks can be exported separately and then used in the way Flash deals with masks.

Images can be exported, but only unwarped. When moved by bones, take care to never change the origin point of an image, otherwise it will end up in strange locations in SWF.

[nickharambee]

Thanks.

My image layers are showing up in Flash CS4 for every frame, even when visibility was set to off in ASP, and I am presuming that this will be the case once the file is exported to SWF, though can't test this as Flash CS4 keeps crashing when attempting to export (the issue is with the SWF file produced by ASP, as I have tried exporting just the ASP SWF on its own and Flash CS4 still crashes).

So I am looking again at what might be possible using just ASP. I converted my movie to a sequence of PNGs and imported with the image sequence script but this still doesn't show up in the rendered SWF file, which seems strange given that switch layers and other PNG files I have imported show up fine. Is this because the PNGs are within a switch layer?

Is there anyway of getting the image sequence to work in a SWF file?

Thanks

Nick

[slowtiger]

I might test this if I find the time ...

[nickharambee]

thanks!