Re: FLASH: MM, need temp file info--JD? BB?

[Frederico]

On 8/19/1999 2:11 PM, John Dowdell via

jdowdellmacromedia [dot] com

, said:


>fwiw, I did a text search of the Flash technotes with terms "temp file" and

>"temp files" but did not pull any hits.

>

>(I have not heard of any use of temp files in Flash myself, for what that's

>worth.)


I didn't get anywhere either, that's why I asked. (:


Well, in some form or fashion Flash must use some sort of temporary 

system for storing information not yet saved to disk. Typically, an 

application will (when working from an existing file) create an invisible 

temp file with both the already created work, and add to that your new 

changes. When you execute a 'save', the temp file is then written 

"permanently" to disk at a visible level , and the original is generally 

made unavailable, though at the visible level you see no change but the 

modification date and size. Obviously, a 'save as' merely makes the temp 

visible, and the original is left unchanged and still visible.


So, the question is, again, does Flash keep and store all of these 

changes and the structure of the file in RAM and Virtual Memory (if 

used), or on disk, and if on disk, where on disk? Is it on the same 

volume as the original document (typical for many applications), is it on 

the same volume as Flash (not typical, but some "dumb" apps like 

scanner-capture programs do this), or is it always relative to the 

Startup volume.


I guess what I'm probably going to find out is that I'm going to be 

unhappy with the answer, whatever it is, and will be writing YAWLI (yet 

another wish list item) for targetable scratch disks.


We are just finding that with MP3 creations, and the need to import and 

add huge chunks of music in raw Aiff format, Flash is just becoming too 

unwieldy and way too big for its britches. Of course, the ideal 

alternative would be for Flash to allow import of already compressed MP3 

files, then this would be much less an issue, but, either way, something 

has got to change.


Running Flash with 200MB, 300MB, 500MB or more of RAM dedicated just 

isn't practical.


Our best success so far is to create a mini-boot System with the Flash 

app and work file onto a dedicated RAM Disks (using System RAM and 2gig 

ATTO PCI RAMDisk card), and it runs blazingly fast, undoubtedly as fast 

as is possible, but it still runs out of memory with large and numerous 

Aiffs involved. Yes, we can do 'LoadMovies', and we can open and close 

files to conserve memory, but we shouldn't have to. Like PhotoShop, et 

al, we should be allowed to opt for working at a slower pace limited only 

by our available disk space and speeds therein.


Is there anyone I can write to for more information here? 


Frederico


AIM to Wintel: The G4 Cometh in 12 days. Be afraid. Be very afraid.


Think Altivec. Think Power. Think Different.



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