I’m just about finished with a Flash movie that will become a web site. The Bandwidth Profiler gives the following info:
MOVIE:
Frame Rate: 24.0 fr/sec
Size: 349 KB (3358324B)Duration: 5294 fr (220.6 s)
SETTINGS:
Bandwidth: 4800B/s (200B/fr)
STATE:
Loaded: 100.0% (5294 frames)
449 KB (460677 B)
I’m wondering why the “MOVIE” size (349 KB is less than the “STATE” size (449 KB)? But I’m also wanting some opinions on the size of this for a web site since I am new to this stuff. Would this be considered a small/average/humungous size??? Sure wish someone out there could view this thing before it goes on the web, but I assume that’s impossible with such a big movie (with about 45 .swf files in it). Anyway, I never could have gotten this far without all the GREAT help from you people on this forum–I sure think there are wonderful individuals out there who are so nice to help dummies like me . Thank you!!
Thanks for the respose…I have a preloader but it’s not working correctly. The preloader (frame 1, “mcLoadingText”) won’t play until the scene is loaded 100%
I’ve attached 2 .jpgs, would you look at them? Firstly, I’m not sure how many frames to load in the-- if (_framesloaded>=50)–Action Script. Secondly, I see the frame 1 in the Bandwidth Profiler Goes way over the red bar (to 256 KB–that’s bad, right? But I only have a small movie clip of text that says “loading”–so why is frame 1 so big? I guess I’m goin’ nowhere with this as a web site if I can’t get the preloader fixed :<((
Well, the very same thing happens with your script and and suggested changes. This is pretty depressing…spend all the time making a web site and I can’t get a preloader to work. I don’t know anyone who does Flash to ask for help. :<( Thank you for trying!
The .fla file is too big–this forum permits a maximum of “102400 byte” attachment. If I opened up an account (web site) at Mac and uploaded the .fla there, would you go there and download the file?..do you have a high speed connection/fast computer? It looks like it’s about 38.7 MB unzipped/unstuffed.
as far as a preloader goes, i havent really had a whole lot of success with the if frame is loaded stuff, you should try a different preloader technique, and then one i would recommend is using getBytesLoaded() and getBytesTotal()…
here is a basic preloader system…
// these go on frame 1
loaded = _root.getBytesLoaded();
total = _root.getBytesTotal();
if (loaded == total){
// here is where you put your actions when the movie is loaded
gotoAndPlay(“movie_start”);
}
then on frame 2 place this code…
gotoAndPlay(1);
basically whats happening is you are creating a loop, and the variable “loaded” is set to the amount of bytes that the movie has loaded…then it sets “total” to the total number of bytes in the movie.
then you have an if then statement that asks if loaded equals total then do whatever…and i have put for the movie to go to frame “movie_start” after this condition is true.
you can do a lot of cool things with this system, for instance make a percentage bar, display percent loaded text…all sorts of things…and its pretty simple…i think theres a tutorial for a loadBar in the tutorials here. check it out.
38+ meg is Huge. Surfers may not wait for it to load even
with a preloader.
Majeye…
The movie in your sig is about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen…
could you point me in the right direction to learn how to build
something similar (considering I’m pretty new to Flash)?
faster: The .fla is 38mb, not the exported .swf file. Also it appears majeyes footer is just a movie clip with tweens in it and that movie clips uses the easing method to follow the mouse…
Ok, now onto other stuff…
the size of the movie is irrelevent if you have a nice preloader. Please tell me a movie that size has a preloader
Is that to say you shouldn’t consider loading time if you have a nice preloader? Im sure that came out wrong, because I know people won’t wait 15 minutes for a site to load just because the site has a nice preloader Also ifFramesLoaded is deprecated, I wouldn’t be surprised if that method was dropped out of AS in the early future.
macmar: There are a ton of Preloader tutorials on this site and forum that can help you out if you don’t know how to make a preloader. Use the search field in the upper left corner, or the forum search button just underneith that to find some.
::the size of the movie is irrelevent if you have a nice preloader. Please tell me a movie that size has a preloader.::
okay, so the size is not made irrelevent by the preloader, but what i meant to convey, was that if its a large movie, the best bet is to occupy the user during the preloader, with a quiz, a fancy mouse-interaction, nudie pics, or whatever it takes! lol
faster: the link that LIB provided was exactly what i was going to share with you. The rest is movie clips inside of movie clips.
Majeye: You are right, a preloader is meant to hold the viewers interest while the site loads instead of showing a blank page, but that doesn’t really give free will on file size and all, but I get what you mean.
Macmar: You should definitely check out loadMovie() you could save a lot on your file size if you have it as seperate smaller movies you can preload individually instead of 1 giant movie with everything.
Yelllo,
You guys are pretty funny–ahhh, Majeye, Nudes–not, but at least your making suggestions, lol.
My published .swf is 420 KB. I have a 254 KB mp3 in it–so I’ll have to take it to my sound editor and do a lot of cutting and pasting. It was in a seperate .swf with a volume slider using linkage with Export in first frame. When I just put the mp3 in a frame on stage it illiminated the preloader problem for the most part–now the new problem, how to get it attached to a volume slider without the Export in first frame set in Linkage??
I’ll try the bytes thing for my preloader.
I have 43 .swf movies I load into my main movie via this script:
tellTarget ("/external1") {
play();
}
Lostinbeta: About the load Movie () thing–do you mean, for example, break up my scenes and make seperate .swfs out of them, then load them into like a background that is the same for all the scenes…am I on the right track?
Well, thanks everybody for all the help–I’ll try to implement your suggestions.
Also ifFramesLoaded is deprecated, I wouldn’t be surprised if that method was dropped out of AS in the early future.