Hey everyone-
I am trying to turn my flash cartoon into a usuable file for YouTube. When I publish my movie as a .mov file, there are some issues with sound, and it's so much bigger than my swf file.
This is my first flash cartoon, and I'm sure there are tons of people in this forum who do this kind of thing all the time, so I was wondering: is there a way of turning my swf file into a mov file (or another kind of file good for YouTube)? How does everyone else do it? Help! :)
Hey, first off, don't be constrained by the .mov, according to youtube, it can also accept .avi. You have different settings to choose for both .mov and .avi. Perhaps the audio will be better in .avi rather than .mov?
Remeber, youtube accepts all of the following:
.WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG
The size is always an issue. A .avi is much much larger than a .swf generally. This is because it saved by having every pixel saved on every frame. .swf is adobe's vector image program allowing to save information per point. It also allows tweens etc, and saves the tweens, rather than saving every frame as an image. It is also capable of saving layers. These are some of the reasons why the file size is huge.
Normally, the problems people have in exporting flash as an .avi is that flash doesn't recognise the information inside movie clips when it exports, not to meantion any actionscript. The way to get around that, is to use a screen grabber. I've done it to hand in animation work that had complex movieclip placements.
To do it, I used a free screengrabber called CamStudio, and you can download it here:
http://www.camstudio.org/
Then I played the movie, and had the camstudio record where the flash was on screen.
Oh, and make sure in File>Publish Settings, the audio is set to a high rate (as you seem to be concerned about the sound).
Good luck with getting it to work.
Actually, the new Flash version CS3 has a GREAT export feature for Quicktime .mov files that actually fixes that problem of the movie clips being controlled by action script. The .mov files will play just like your swf files. Thanks, Adobe!!
So how different is the CS3 version of Flash? Are you using it on a Mac? Is it worth the upgrade? And do you also have any thoughts on the CS3 version of After Effects?
Here's the skinny on Flash CS3 (version 9):
Drawing tools are way more like the tools you're used to in Adobe, like in Illustrator. But the BEST part is the business about the movie clips working in the exported .mov files. They fixed it so the exported .mov file will play like your .swf file. Thank goodness!!! Yes, I am using it on a Mac. If you are thinking about upgrading, I totally recommend it. It will make your life much easier! I don't use AfterEffects, so I can't give any feedback on that.
Hi janedoe and welcome to the AWN Forums.
If you are animating with Flash on a Mac, you can export a quicktime directly from Flash. If you are using a PC, I'd go to the apple site and download Quicktime Pro. It's $30 but it's a great program. So export an avi from Flash, thn with Quicktime Pro, open your .avi then export it out as a .mov file. You can compress it pretty well with QT Pro esspecially if you lower the sound quality. That makes files very large.
Try giving that a shot.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."