Re: FLASH: How big is BIG?

[Laura Mollett]

Hi Dave,


> Just as a curiosity, how big can a streaming swf be to be practical.  Say if

> I was to sync an mp3 audio stream to an animation what happens when you try

> to stream continuously say 5 minutes worth across the net?  How does flash

> cache the stream on a users machine? Does it clean up after itself once

> displayed?  I would be interested to hear from other flashers in regards to

> some file size's tried....


What happens depends on a thousand factors and ability to manipulate this to

get what you want is (imo, of course) probably the true determining factor

of a flash (web) expert... very definately one of the hardest things to

learn. (hey, I'm working on it ;) Flash displays whatever it can as soon as

it is available (rather than buffering some). If it's finished displaying

what's been given to it, and the next thing isn't available yet, it

pauses/just sits there until more is available. The trick is to put enough

light stuff in front that the heavier things are there and ready when the

light stuff is finished displaying... tricky parts are that it depends on

processor, modem speed, and server reliability (both yours and all the jumps

between yours and the receiver) as to how much light stuff is required. The

swf could be absolutely humongous in total size, and still display perfectly

even on slower modems if it's arranged right (in theory anyway). If you set

your sound to sync on stream, the movie will jump frames to keep up with the

sound, so the trick then would be to make the sound the right size to

download according to the modem/server speed (or to make sure you don't get

frames jumped that you don't want jumped), I think - I don't know that much

about sound.


As for flash cleaning up after itself, my best guesses are that it does

some. I think the plug-in calls the flash player, which has a limited size

that it'll display at once (set by hand on the mac, determined by total

available space on the pc (again, I think)). If you overload the flash

player, it'll just sit there partway through something. However, the player

must clear itself out some. For example, if you're loading a bunch of

movies, and play through several, suddenly the player memory will overload

and it won't play the whole thing. However, if you close the second movie

and reload it (without loading another one first), it will often go ahead

and play that one (even though everything else you've played is in the

cache) so it must be clearing it out of the player somehow. You can also

unload things that aren't needed anymore, and I guess it clears those out

somewhere (but I believe they're still in the browser cache.)


Dunno that this makes any sense... I'm kind of spacey when I'm trying to

talk on this list from work :) Anyways, my two cents... love to see what

others have to say. Interesting question!


Laura


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