Flash Presentation Dimensions

[wyclef]

I've got to make a Flash Presentation to be used embedded in a web page (more like typical quicktime movie sizes) and also to be used at Trade Shows. My question is what dimensions to use for the Flash File?

[JoshuaJonah]

Whatever looks the best. Theres really no right answer to that question.

I like to use 900x550.

[wyclef]

so 900x550 could be scaled down to a quicktime movie size and then a larger tradeshow style size without causing to much complication?

[JoshuaJonah]

make it the size it will be diplayed at, thats the best way to do it.

[unclesond]

I guess it depend on your content. If its all vector it should scale up, but if has to do lots of tweens/animations it may slow down when scaled up. Well it has from my experience. If you are using raster images then your gonna want a decent res if your projecting at tradeshows. For my projections I always use 1280x1024 for my XGA projector, but obviously thats not a good size for web viewing. Ideally you'd design two pieces for the varying resolutions. As a projected res could be double that of a web res....possibly.

Maybe if you add some details of the content provided I can advise better. Such as how much text/image/speed/user controlled etc..

Also is there a space waiting in a website for your content? So is there a companies page its restricted to fit within?

[wyclef]

I'm basically dealing with no direction right now. I think there will mainly be vectors with a title and subheader per "slide" but there will also be a few bitmaps...not many. I'm going to try and create an automated presentation so if there is any interactivity it would be very minimal, like a next button or restart button or something. The client kinda has their head up their *** so maybe you guys can help me formulate an intelligent question I can put back in their court?

[unclesond]

A good starting point would be to do a say 400x300 or 320x256 or for your web pres, then say if your using 8 point fonts as test and say 10 as titles. Then if you beam at 1280x1024 it will boost up about 3 or 4 times....That would give perhaps overly legible fonts on a projector.

Maybe aim your maths for fonts between 8 and 12 for web, then around 20/24 and above for porjected media. So say 10 x 3 and 12 x 3 = 30 and 36....so maybe 1200 wide to beam, would be 400 wide for web....Give it a try and play around, work at web size then Ctrl + F your swf to see how it wld look full screen.

Presentations at shows are hard to be interactive, unless you have control over it. Otherwise one person will be controlling the pace. You'll also need to consider the lengh of it, so people can easily view it....too long and they dont hang around, or miss the start, too short and its too intense....the two mediums of display and web are very different. So find out how they plan to present things in the show....lots of terminals? one projector? One big screen etc...Max res of screen. Size ratio etc. Then you can start to figure out how your content will be represented.

Coolest thing for shows, get motion detection, as someone walks up a sensor starts the movie playing. Pretty easy to do in flash too. As long as you have an Analogue Input device such as a Teleo board. Get your client to buy you one, they're well fun and add a nice element to flash presentation in public spaces. Obviously they can do more than just detect motion.

[wyclef]

plasma screen...45" flat screen

[wyclef]

This is the TV specifically.

http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&vertical=ELEC&pid=05775036000&subcat=Plasma+%26+LCD+TVs