I am working on a flash presentation that will be run from a desktop as a projector. The issues I am having are, when I load swfs onto levels the movie seems to stall or stutter… it is not fluid. I thought that loading movies would help with the file size which would then improve performance but I seem to be wrong.
Would it be better to simply keep it all as one big movie? It will be running off the desktop anyway, would file size matter? My goal, obviously, is to have this projector play as smoothly as possible… but it will contain many images and an 8 minute MPEG.
the more files you have the larger the total file size. The advantages of separation are, for online, having the end user only download whats needed ‘on demand’ and not everything all at once which, a) lets them start faster and b) reduces overall bandwidth. For offline, and in a way online too, its more of a matter of memory management. Flash really has none. The less memory you’re using though, technically the better your movie will play. You really don’t want an 8 minute movie just sitting in memory if you’re not using it (Flash is especially bad with movies - anything too long or too big often means trouble). But, yes, there will be a slight delay in loading any such movie in. Afterall, Flash would need to read and load that info into memory and play it. Thats not isntantaneous and will take time, even from the hard drive.
You may just need to test it and see what works best given your situation. In terms of access time, you’ll be better off having it all as one movie. However, if you’re movie is a hefty one, and you have 2946204876 images, you may want to have them separate just so you don’t bog down the system which can ultimately hurt overall performance (and even crash the player).
a swf will run through a ‘projector’ (the flash player.exe) if installed on your system - this being only for those who have Flash installed. Otherwise it would be played through the browser. If played through a browser, it will be a tiny bit slower. So a projector or the Flash player is preferable in terms of performance.
wouldn’t it be possible to load swfs via a projector file and run them sequentially. I think if you can do that, and strategically place your ‘loadMovie’-s it would probably be more efficent. presumming you also unload the movies.