Optimizing Flash Movies for Fast Download

Reducing your Flash Player file sizes is no longer so important because many people now have high-speed Internet connections. But not everyone does. So it still isn’t a bad idea to spend a little time thinking about shrinking the size

of your Flash movies.

Simplifying artwork

By simplifying the artwork in your movie, you can greatly reduce the size of a Flash movie, thereby increasing its speed. Here are the most important techniques:

• Use symbols for every object that appears more than once. You can turn any object or group of objects into a symbol. Nest your symbols — for example, turn an object into a symbol and then use it in a movie clip or button. Remember that you can change the color of symbol instances — you don’t need to create a new symbol.


• Group objects whenever possible. Groups are almost as efficient as symbols.


• Use vector graphics rather than bitmaps when you can. When you do use bitmaps, don’t animate them unless you need to. Bitmaps and bitmap animation can increase your Flash Player file size and thus the download time. However, with the rising adoption of broadband Internet access, bitmaps are an increasingly important part of Flash projects


• Optimize curves (choose Modify➪Shape➪Optimize). You can optimize curves to reduce the number of lines used to create a shape. This can be tiresome on a large project, but if you really need to reduce the size of your Flash movie, this may help.


• Use solid lines rather than dashed, dotted, and other line types when possible. Try to avoid custom line widths


• Use the Pencil tool rather than the Brush tool whenever possible. The Pencil tool uses fewer bytes in your movie.


• Use the Web-safe color palette. Avoid custom colors. Custom color definitions are kept with the Flash Player file.


• Avoid using transparency when you don’t need it. Using transparency doesn’t make your Flash file bigger, but it can slow down playback because of the extra calculation required. (On the other hand, sometimes transparency effects make your movie look really great.)


• Use solid fills rather than gradients. Gradients are more complex and make the Flash Player file bigger. However, gradients are also key to the Flash look that is so popular. They help to make vector graphics look less flat

Optimizing text

Text can consume lots of bytes. Here’s what you can do to reduce the byte bite:

• Reduce the number of fonts and font styles (bold, italic) as much as possible. Use simpler sans serif fonts if you can. You get the best results file-size-wise with the device fonts (sans, serif, and typewriter), although you might find these device fonts boring. Flash doesn’t need to store the outlines of device fonts in the .swf file, so these take up fewer bytes. And usually your Flash projects will look better if you don’t use too many fonts — a useful rule in the graphic design world is to avoid using more than three fonts in a design.


• If you create text fields, limit the text and specify any restrictions that you can in the Character Options dialog box.(Choose Window➪ Property➪Properties to open the Property inspector if it’s not already open, and then click Character in the Property inspector to open the Character Options dialog box.) For example, exclude unnecessary character outlines, such as numbers.

Compressing soundYou can compress sounds to reduce the file size. When you compress individual sounds in the Sound Properties dialog box, you can fine-tune settings for each individual sound in your movie. Use the MP3 format whenever possible because it compresses well.

Here are some other ways that you can reduce the size of your sound files:

• Adjust the sound’s Time In and Time Out points to prevent silent areas from being stored in your .swf file.


• Reuse sounds by using different In and Out points and by looping different parts of the same sound.


• Don’t loop streaming sound.

Animating efficiently

One of the most effective ways to reduce file size is to use tweens. Frame-by-frame animation creates larger files. Keeping animation localized in one area also helps. Small animations (animations where the objects don’t move much) produce smaller file sizes than wide-area animations.

Note: Source information from Flash CS3 for Dummies e-book

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