Re: FLASH: Scenes versus Labels

[John Croteau]

Hi Jim,


> John C. discouraged the use of Scenes. I've

> been mulling over this point for a while now (and rather than run a few

> tests to see if it matters to file size), I'd like to ask the reasoning

> here.


There are several reasons I suggest not to uses Scenes.


1) File size will be increased if items that appear at the end of one

scene are used in the first frame of the next. This is because every

item in a new Scene is new and has a placement cost in the first frame

of a Scene.

This is not normally a problem but should be considered. My Xmas 97

movie done in Flash 2 is 64K when done in a single Scene but was over

250K when divided into 5 Scenes. This is because of the placement costs.

In the one Scene version over 700 Angel buttons are placed only one time

each. Whereas  in the 5 Scene version there are 5 x 700 or 3500

placement costs for the Angel buttons which are used thoughout the

movie.

If there are no carry over graphics (from one scene to the next) there

is no penalty for using Scenes since there are no graphics that would

have to be placed more than once. There is a small cost for placing each

symbol and most of the time this cost will not be large but in some

cases it can add up and the result can be huge.


2) Movie Clips can not be used across Scene boundaries. If a Movie Clip

is used in both Scene One and Scene Two the Movie Clip when accessed in

the second scene will be restarted from its beginning and any

information stored in it will be lost.

Though you can use Load Movie instead of a Movie Clip, this can create

other problems such as making sure that the second Movie is loaded

before accessing it.


> Seems to be a great way to organize even small projects--heck, the

> docs certainly encourage use of scenes and the show me samples and demos

> do too.

As scenes are designed now there are potential problems when using

scenes that in my opinion outweigh the benefits of using them other than

as temporary staging mechanism before combining them into a single Scene

Movie.


> Does John know something that MM isn't telling the rest of us?

I know that MM has mentioned the Movie Clip/Scene problem both here and

in the newsgroup. Just today John Dowdell, Brad Bechtel and David

Mendels (all from MM) posted replies to problems posted here on the

Flasher List. Other MM staff also post here such as David Baldeschweiler

and Jon Gay among others. I am glad that they not only listen but

participate in solving and discussing Flash problems. Remember that this

List is completely independent of Macromedia and this is not an official

support area for MM. 

Please also note that our kind host for this List is the Webmedia Group

and Sam Michel. 


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John Croteau

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

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