Re: Preloading of Multiple Scenes Still Not Reliable?

[John Croteau]

Hi Bryan,


The following are my personal observations (for those who don't know me,

I do not work for MM)


> I have restrained myself from hoping that Macromedia's knowledge base

> will be as robust as Microsoft's. If this were the case we really

> wouldn't need Flashers would we?

Microsoft has a good knowledgwe base but I find many things missing

there, too.

 

> KNOWN ISSUES:

> * Shockwave Flash may fail to recognize Action commands during prolonged

> streaming.

Normally this is do to a call to a frame that is not loaded, yet. This

is not limited to long movies. The solution is to use a Wait-for-frame

or its updated version 'If Frame is Loaded' in Flash 3. The problem is

not limited to large files but is sometimes difficult to pin down

because the problem may only occur when the internet is slow,

intermittent or sometimes a problem occurs because the connection is

actually faster than originally tested with.

> 

> * The vocabulary words "Page" and "Scene" have not been clearly defined.

Scenes are used in the authoring environment only (not in the swf file)

and are a convenience to the author to reduce long timelines to a more

manageable size. In Flash 2 it also makes it easier for goto frame

references. There is no cost to add scenes except if there are objects

that are in the previous frame that continue into the next scene, then

there are costs for placing those items an additional time.


> * "Absolute" frame numbers are not recognized within the Flash 2 user

> interface (but are exported in the Size Report).

The addition of labels in Flash 3 is a much better solution.


> QUESTIONS:


> * What is the recommended "maximum" file size of .SWF files?

No, stated size. 

Many files 900K or more seem to play fine.

The larger files take a very long time to export to the swf format,

breaking large files into smaller movies with the seamless Load Movie

can make creating and troubleshooting problems more manageable plus not

require recreating the whole project for each change. Load Movie allows

chaining or random access as required.


> * What is the recommended "maximum" number of scenes in Flash2?

None known but this is an authoring issue only. See above about scenes.


> * Can anyone list how many things could degrade during streaming? E.g.

> what events may not fire after a large time?

So far all failures I have investigated are caused by structure problems

that can be fixed with change of structure or the proper addition

wait-for-frames.


> * Does Flash3 eliminate some of the problems shared here?

Some and others often can be corrected by new techniques as we learn

more about Flash.


-----------                               -----------------------

John Croteau

croteauerols [dot] com (mailto:croteauerols [dot] com)

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