Video in Flash MX 2004 by kirupa :
8 June 2004In the
previous page, you learned how to
incorporate a video file in Flash MX 2004. You may have
noticed that we skipped over a lot of settings and
customizations that deal with video editing. The following
sections will try to go back and re-explain some of the
video editing features of Flash that we did not cover.
Simple Video Editing
Flash MX 2004 includes simple movie editing
features that allow you to perform some basic tasks. Go
back to Importing your movie from the
previous page, and
stop when you get to the screen where you are presented with the two
options to either "Import the entire video" or to "Edit the
video first." From this screen, select the option for "Edit the video first"
and press Next:
[ the option
for editing the video ]
After you selected "Edit the
video first" and pressed Next, you should see something similar to
the following scaled-down image:
[ the video
editing screen ]
Cropping the Movie
If you are interested in cropping your movie, you will do so
in this screen using the small triangles located on the
bottom left and bottom right corners of the timeline:
[ the circled
"in" and "out" triangles are used to crop the movie ]
To crop the movie, click and
drag the in (left) or out (out) triangular
sliders. The blue area seen in your
timeline represents the portion of your movie that will be
played when your movie is exported to your main Flash
timeline. By clicking and dragging, you can adjust which
portions of your movie are displayed such as what you see in
my above screenshot.
You can press the Preview Clip
button to preview only the portion of your movie that is
between the in our out sliders. Once you have finished
picking the portion of the movie you want to see, press
Create Clip and give the clip a name. You are free to create
more in and out points and create additional clips. You can
also rearrange the clips in the left side of your wizard by
using the pictured move up and move down arrows:
[ create,
rename, and move up or move down additional clips ]
Press Next once you are done.
You can press the Finish button, and you will see the
portion of your cropped movie in Flash, but don't press
Finish if you are planning on learning how to adjust the
compression settings.
Adjusting Compression
To adjust the compression settings for your movie, go back
to your Import Video Wizard and follow the directions by
clicking Next until you reach the Encoding screen. While you
specified a bandwidth setting from the drop-down menu in the
previous page (DSL/Cable 256k), you will press the Edit
button to the right of the Compression Profile drop-down
menu.
You should see something
similar to the cropped version of the following image:
[ the compression settings
]
The Bandwidth Setting
allows you to adjust your compression techniques based only
on the bandwidth. Setting a higher value signifies a user
with a faster connection, therefore the quality will be a
lot better than setting the bandwidth slider at 56. While
you are sliding the slider, you can see the effects of the
compression on the video on the right.
The Quality/Keyframes setting
takes a different approach towards optimizing your movie
compared to the above Bandwidth method. This method gives
you a greater say in adjusting the quality of your movie. Setting a higher
quality, similar to the quality setting for a JPEG image,
will cause your movie's size to be larger.
Increasing the
number of keyframes will also increase the size of your
movie. By having more frames, the transition between one
frame and another is more smooth. You won't have a lot of
choppiness with extra frames. If you drag the slider to the
right, you increase the number of keyframes. If you drag the
slider to the left, you decrease the number of keyframes -
thus making the movie a bit choppier.
In summary, any setting
that increases quality or increases the number of frames,
will have a negative impact on users with low-speed
connections.
Conclusion
Hope fully this tutorial
helps you to better understand how to use videos in Flash MX
2004. You may find that varying video formats work
differently in the Import Wizard, so you may find some very
minor variations in the above tutorial depending on the
video format you are using.
Thanks to the awesome super
moderator
senocular
(that rhymes!) for providing the video for the example
animation you saw on the previous page.
Just a final word before we wrap up. If you have a question and/or want to be part of a friendly, collaborative community of over 220k other developers like yourself, post on the forums for a quick response!
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