Topic: Flash file size... any suggestions?

I've just about finished up a flash presentation for a client. Originally he (my client) wanted this presentation done for a CD. So as I was creating it I wasn't really worried about file size as the CD-rom would access it very quickly. But now he is excited about how it is looking and wants it online also... right now it's just over 600 KB (and not finished). I can't start over and I'm not experienced enough in flash to bail myself out... any ideas? Is there a simple way to change things so individual movie clips won't load until they are accessed? Thanks for any help. Peace.

Music = Oxygen
70% of statistics are made up on the spot.

There are lots of ways to pre-load content in flash, google for "flash load tutorial" and you should have enough to keep you buzy for days.

That said, flash, like anything else you put on the web should be properly optimized with appropiate compression settings and the like. Video content and audio are usually the largest pocket fillers when it comes to flash content, so starting to optomize those should trim things down a bit. You should also avoid importing the same graphic multiple times, and make sure you cull the library of any duplicate media or media that isn't actually being used in the outputted swf movie(s).

Furthermore, in future it's probably best to ask the flash related questions in the "Multimedia & Animation" forum, just to keep things nice and orderly.

Over to multimedia for you ------------------------------------------>

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org

Sorry for posting on the wrong board...

Thanks for the pointers Cameron.

Music = Oxygen
70% of statistics are made up on the spot.

So what's included in this movie? Does it all need to load up front? Are there jpeg images or mp3 music that can be loaded from outside the movie? Are there any "modules" that can be separate and loaded into the main movie when called for? Sorta hard to give advice when we don't know the composition of your movie. If it's all animations and tweens I don't know how much smaller you can make it other than to lower the output quality settings as Cameron suggested when you compile your movie.

Where is the bulk in the movie coming from?

quote:

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If it's all animations and tweens I don't know how much smaller you can make

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Yes, it's mostly animations. There is no sound, or video, and only a few images. What I've got is about 16 (or so) frames with different movie clips in each frame. I'm hoping to find some way to load the movies clips when they are accessed; or even better, have the next movie clip load while the previous one is being viewed... is that possible? Thanks for the help.


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[This message has been edited by redroy (edited 02-21-2004).]

Preloading - not real practical here.

If you have 16 animations, can you save each one as a separate swf, and then use loadMovie as needed? This keeps the main movie very light weight, and if the total is 600K, each of the 16 animations by itself couldn't be too big, so the load time should be short.

Does the movie lend itself to being fragmented this way?

Saving as individual swfs... that's a good idea! I'll give her a shot and get back to you. Thanks.

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