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I N-S C R I P T-I O N

Use Methods over Actions as often as possible
Most programmers are familiar with the use of methods using the "dot" syntax. If you have been using Flash for some time and have never really gotten into programming languages like JavaScript, this may be unfamiliar territory. Understand now that Macromedia is phasing out many of the "Actions" you may be familiar with in favor of the javascript-like programming structure that you see in the new Flash 5 interface. The "Tell Target" action, for instance, does not work with all the new functions available in Flash 5. This action is left in for backwards compatibility and may not be available in version 6!

F E A T U R E  A R T I C L E Design Time Flash Optimization by Shawn Fernandez Dissymmetry Web Development

Q U I C K  T I P Use the Effect panel to adjust the colors of instances of a single symbol, instead of creating multiple symbols.

All Flash designers hit this wall sooner or later. You have this great mental image of what you want to create in Flash. You’ve overcome great obstacles in developing an excellent visual layout. Then you test your movie only to see a jerky misrepresentation of your great vision. So what’s the problem here? There are sets of design considerations that are still governed, believe it or not, by CPU speed.

The problem: slow frame rate and variable playback speed. This is due to too much CPU intensive activity going on at once in the Flash movie. Flash is an excellent delivery system for interactive graphics, but it is a tool that must be used correctly. Here are a few design guidelines to help prevent this frame rate drag:

Movie playback is slowed by download time
A movie will stop and not display the next frame if the contents of that frame have not been loaded yet. This can be solved by either preloading or reducing the bandwidth load of the frames in question. There are two methods of preloading: a) Preload symbols in the background across the movie timeline which are known to be download problems. This spreads the bandwidth load of heavy frames more evenly across the entire movie. To preload symbols, in the first frame of the movie place an instance of the symbol hidden from view under a background object or well off the stage. b) Preload frames before playback. This is the typical preloader or "Loading Screen" technique. All frames or a certain number of frames are tested for loading status before playback begins. For best preloader results, you do not need to preload the entire movie, just the heavy frames. These two methods can be combined to produce the best performance for download time and playback speed.

Large areas of graphics calculations
Large or complex areas of bitmaps, masks, gradients and alpha (fills, shapes or symbol effects) require large amounts of cpu processing for each frame. This goes up even further when the graphic is tweened. Keep at a minimum the use of these features in Flash. When used, keep the area affected to a minimum. Large areas of alpha regardless if tweened or not require the CPU to process every pixel numerous times to render the alpha. Alpha takes longer to read and longer to render for each pixel...double whammy. Use these features sparingly.

Complex vectored images
While vector images are smaller in size, complex vector graphics can be much larger than their bitmapped counterparts. All vector graphics should be optimized using the optimize feature in Flash. With this feature, use the undo command judiciously, make changes to the optimize settings and play with the output and undo until you get the desired optimization with acceptable image quality. It often produces better results to optimize smaller portions of the vector graphic at a time, rather than all at once.

The time to handle these problems is in the design stage, not the testing stage. If you are finding this in the testing stage, you have wasted much of your valuable time and will undo and redo many times over to get the desired performance. The timeline will let you know right away if you have too much going on at once. Use the design time playhead (Enter key) to test each frames’ framerate. Don't forget that you need to test all of your Flash work on computers of differing performance (i.e. cpu speed) to know how it will be viewed by your audience.

H O T  L I N K S

Additional internet resources for Flash optimization techniques:

Preloading Symbols
Macromedia
Preloading Movies
Dissymmetry
FlashKit
Macromedia
Were-here
General Guidelines
Macromedia
Bitmap Optimization
Vector Graphics Optimization

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