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Optimizing a Flash Movie

Free Flash Tutorial

12. Large Flash Projects

Linear or Interactive
A Flash movie can be either linear or Interactive in it's nature. If you create a animation you know that it will play from frame 1 in a linear fashion right through to the last frame. These types of files are easier to deal with and the combination of the Bandwidth Profiler and the Size Report in conjunction with Show Streaming enables you to control the lumps and bumps that are inevitable in Flash projects.

If you have a Flash Movie with a menu that enables the viewer to go to many different location within the Flash movie, the tools available are useful but limited. The problem being that Flash downloads in a linear fashion from frame 1 through to the last frame.

This is particularly problematic if the Flash file is very large. For example if you are creating a gallery site which has many dozens or even hundreds of bitmap images the file size would be massive. If I came to that site and wanted to see only one picture that was on frame 100 - I would have to wait till all the other images on frames 1 to 99 have loaded before I could see the picture I wanted.

The answer is not to build one Flash Movie but many little ones. You can use loadMovie and loadMovieNum to load multiple Flash movies one on top of another. So what happens when I want to go to picture 100 - it simply loads that movie on top of the one that I already have open. There will be a slight delay if there is a large Jpeg embedded in the movie but the wait will be a few seconds. With one large file there could be a wait of minutes.

This is a more complicated way of building a site but ultimately worth the effort as it is a much better experience for the punter. This is not like pop up windows, it is invisible. The viewer will not be aware that multiple movies are running. What's more one movie can control actions or events that are happening in another movie.

To learn how to use loadMovie and loadMovieNum see tutorial: KeyWords - Load Movies into Levels and Movie Clips

Preloaders
Nobody wants to wait. But sometimes we all have to. It is always better to have a pre-loader that tells the viewer how long they have to wait. This does not need to be in seconds but can be a percentage of the movie loaded so far. Whilst the preloader is running it is worth giving the viewer something to read or an animation to view. I think that even quite small files are better with preloaders. Even as small as 20KB? The decision depends on what else is on the web page. I do not put pre-loaders on the Flash Movies in these tutorial pages as there is plenty to read so I feel it is not necessary. If the Flash movie is the main event you probably need a preloader. It is possible to create a preloader that does not wait for the entire Flash Movie to load but only part. Remember that as the viewer looks at the first sections of the movie the rest will be loading in the background.

Cross Ref: To learn how to create a preloader see tutorial: Intermediate - Preloader