RE: FLASH: bad scenes?

[Paul Willoughby]

Jeremy

I agree using scenes is largely down to personal preference, but sometimes

they do act in a screwy way (i don't use them much - see previous). But

although a symbol can be re-used thousands of times, the more instances of

that symbol there are the greater the file size. Look at it this way, if you

have a layer with all your navigation elements in it and 4 scenes in which

that navigation should appear, you'll have to put a copy of that layer in

every scene. This *will* increase the file size of the movie, as opposed to

having 1 scene with the navigation elements only appearing once in the

movie. Try it yourself - a movie with 50 instances of a clip is bigger than

a movie with 1 instance.


Paul


-----Original Message-----

From: Brack, Jeremy [

Jeremy [dot] Brackimgusa [dot] com (mailto:Jeremy [dot] Brackimgusa [dot] com)

]

Sent: 13 September 2000 20:43

To:

'flasherchinwag [dot] com

'

Subject: RE: FLASH: bad scenes?



JGL:

Well I think you said it best when you could not provide me with any example

of a movie with bad scenes.

I can however provide you with many (thousands)of examples of Flash 4 movies

with good scenes and interactivity.


One of your points that you list below is in regards to a Flash scene

replicating a movie clip for each scene and therefore increasing download

time.  This was way back in the days of Flash 2 (1997), if you read the

post.  Flash 4 has full support for Symbols.  You create a movie clip SYMBOL

and it is downloaded once, and is re-used infinitely thoughout all scenes

until you manually delete your browser cache.


You found a lot of old posts and none of them explains even 1 example of a

scene based movie not working.

Thats it, you dont like scenes.  They are not bad or good, its just a matter

of personal taste.

There are no bad-scene based movies, because scenes work perfectly.


If scenes did not work, then MM would not have incorporated them into Flash

4/5.

Case closed. Scenes vs pure movieclip is a matter of personal taste.



Jeremy


-----Original Message-----

From: JGL [

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

]

Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 3:17 PM

To:

flasherchinwag [dot] com

Subject: RE: FLASH: bad scenes?



Jeremy,


It's just known facts. No I haven't saved any fla's demonstrating the

limitations of using scenes in your movies. Why would I. Plus I really don't

have the time to recreate this 'demonstration'. Why bother. Facts are Facts.


I tried to dig up some past discussion about the use of scences but

apparently those articles are deeply buried probably cause it's a known and

dropped issue. Scenes have limitations..


>>Are you creating the bad-scene FLA files in Flash 4 or Flash 5?



I don't create bad scene problems cause I don't use scenes.


Here, read these I copied from Helen's itechnica site:

(Hope the authors don't mind)



>flash project structure suggestions

Contributed by: Karin Christensen (

karincccosmo [dot] net

), 4/29/00

I personally like movie clips.  They are easy to manage, edit and I can

easily copy them to another movie if I want.  If the content is large then

you may want to use another swf which can be loaded into a level.  I would

avoid scenes. Another part of the timeline works alright if there is simply

some text that you want to go to and your movie is fairly simple.  Be sure

to use frame labels.


>

why not to use scenes

Contributed by: Marc Hoffman (

maildartfrogmedia [dot] com

), 2/7/00

To quote John Croteau:

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.

This also applies to using a sound loop in a movie clip: it will be reset on

every scene boundary, so the sound won't be seamless.


>

why not scenes

Contributed by: Hal Medrano (

hmedranuswest [dot] com

), 5/10/00

Scenes are bad because they reset movie clips and audio.  Those are really

the main reasons.  If you have an MC in one scene, and it has played to

perhaps frame 30 of its own timeline, when you switch to another scene, the

MC will automatically revert to frame 1.  Ditto with Sound FX.  I also find

pieces that have a lot of interactivity are just plain easier to work with

when you use MCs,  once Tell-Targeting becomes second-nature.

If you 're not using MCs or sound FX, I suppose scenes are fine for linear

pieces, such as business presentations.  But I would still avoid them if

you're jumping the player head all over the timeline with a highly

interactive piece (eg a website), or using any MCs.


All contributors of the above quotes are high respected members of the flash

community.


Case Closed ;)


jgl


p.s. sorry for the long email, but maybe will end the start of this age old

debate . . . ;)




-----Original Message-----

JGL:

I have not experienced any of the problems you are stating.  I have created

several scene based movies with Tell Target, specific frame targets in

multiple scenes and full interactivity with absolutely no problems when

published to swf.


Do you perhaps have any FLA's available demonstrating this scene problem

that you have?

Are you creating the bad-scene FLA files in Flash 4 or Flash 5?


Jeremy



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