Export to Quicktime
I was having this serious problem up until yesterday in trying to figure out the best way to create an FLV file from a flash animation (FLA) that had embedded movie clip animations within different simultaneous layers in the timeline. My first attempt at trying to deal with this was exporting an AVI file of the entire animation. But AVI files don’t show the embedded animations at all. So that was off the table.
Another attempt was to export a SWF file, and then convert that SWF into an AVI. But that ended up with loosing picture quality. Also the framerate was a little choppy, not to mention that the programs that said they could convert the SWF to AVI were not free either. So that was off the table.
But then yesterday I thought about directly converting the FLA itself into a FLV and I didn’t know how to do that, so I googled it. What I found was a website called ehow.com that recommended that I exported the FLA into a quicktime MOV format. This surprised me because I expected the MOV file to not included the embedded information similarly to an AVI. But it did in fact export the FLA into a MOV file that came with all my embedded movie clips and the framerate looked good as well. What I was most impressed with, was how the color quality was not affected, since I exported the MOV in “Animation” mode. Animation mode exports takes up a lot of processing power and hard drive space but they preserve the quality.
Once I had the MOV file, this can be easily converted into a FLV file that is great for uploading to YouTube. The best way to convert it to a FLV is by using an official Adobe Flash Video Encoder. But eHow.com recommended that I used quicktime pro to encode the flv file, but you have to buy quicktime pro for that. And since I already have Adobe Flash Video Encoder, that really is not necessary.
But there’s a twist to all this. Have you ever noticed that when you make a flash movie that is animated using vector graphics instead of bitmaps, that when you increase the size of the finished SWF during playback, that the image gets bigger without necessarily decreasing the picture quality? The reason for this is because of the vector based graphics, it actually redraws the stuff using processing power. So the super cool thing, is that when I end up exporting my finished FLA into quicktime when I’m done with the music video, I’m going to increase the video size. This way I’ll be able to make an image that should work on YouTube in HD, without having to actually draw the video using some huge resolution that takes up a ton of processing power and ram. This is extremely exciting since I want to show the music video to friends on a TV when it’s done.
The option for the size of the video shows up when you choose to export in Quicktime in Animation Mode.
I can’t tell you how much better this looks than trying to get creative by messing with SWF files and converters. This is seriously energizing and I’d thought I’d share the info with everyone.
Here’s a link to the eHow article on Exporting FLA files. Although I disagree with using Quicktime for the second part, it makes sense and is much cheaper if someone doesn’t have Adobe Flash Video Encoder.
-Tyler
