I have a simple expandable advertisement which loads an external SWF file. The external SWF file contains an embedded video.
Using the UILoader component, I have loaded the SWF, added it to the stage and the video displays and plays fine.
The main issue is that I have a close button, which should unload the video, and stop it, essentially returning to the default state of the advertisement.
To unload the SWF, I am doing the following:
myUILoader.unload();
removeChild(myUILoader);
When I do this, the video and UILoader disappear from the screen. However, you can still hear the sound in the background, and if I load the SWF again, it creates multiple tracks in the background. Any suggestions?
There are a couple of things that could cause this. One is that the content inside your UILoader is adding event listeners to outside of itself. You can fix this by not allowing it to touch anything outside itself. I believe you can do this by placing it either in its own ApplicationDomain, SecurityDomain, or both. Consult the help for more details.
If this is not feasible, you can try SoundMixer.stopAll(), which will stop the obvious symptom, but will not fix the memory leak you probably have in this situation.
Another possibility, as Ronnie has alluded to, is that you still have a reference to the content of the loader somewhere. If you don't clear that, it will stay in memory.
However, there is another problem that can also cause this, which is that if there is navigation in the movie that skips over a frame that contains a MovieClip with audio set to "stream," the MC will be created but not fully instantiated and will stay in memory with no way to get any control over it or release it. I don't think this is what is happening from your description. If it is, the fix is to make sure that you visit the frame that contains the sound, however briefly, on the way to the other frame. This is actually something you might want to consider even without sounds, because it does occur any time you skip frames in nested MovieClips (you just have no evidence unless you profile the swf), and over time this will create a memory leak.
Related
Please click on the below link
http://hpecp.vmokshagroup.com/videobook/html/homepage.html
When we click on "What is VideoBook" link we got some blank screen before starting the swf file due to video fetching from the server. We have to avoid blank screen.
We are facing a problem of fetching the video clips from the hosting server. I added two video clips in Flash (.swf)... one is from the beginning, another one is at the ending and in between some text animations.
While we are playing/calling .swf file in browser from hosting server, initially getting blank screen. It takes some time to fetching the video clip from server due to size. Starting of first video clip duration is about 3-6 seconds. While video is being loaded.. text animation is starting without playing first video clip. Same problem we are facing in second video at the ending.
Is there any option to incorporate video clips internally in Flash (.swf file) rather than calling from external server or external file path?
Any help would be appreciated.
This happens because of the JavaScript that you use - it actually makes the swf files (in)visible depending on the situation. What this does is that it actually loads the .swf files each time. You can check that in the Network tab of your debugger (I'm using Chrome).
So it first loads Video-01d.swf, or Video-02.swf. They take time to load, and just when the main file is loaded, it starts to load the video file (video1.flv).
All that causes delay, and it's pretty normal as you have all that things in separate files. If you want to, you can merge them into one - just import the flv inside your .swf file and it will work out well..
Of course, you will need to change all your logic for the flash files that you are playing. You will also need to change the JavaScript to call Flash functions in order to tell it to go to another "scene".
I will advise you to add a simple gif loader image (like this), put it as a background-image of the div, and put some color into that div. What the user will see is that the movie disappears, there is a black background with a loading symbol inside, and then the new video begins. It's a normal thing to see online - preloaders :) Good luck!
I have a background MovieClip in a custom button class, which moves the play head to a different frame (via gotoAndStop("framename")) depending on which mouse events it receives.
When the mouse up event is received, it sends the play head back to the "release" frame, where the background should shift back to its original location, but instead nothing happens and the background remains where it was. It's as though Flash is not honoring the background's position defined by the key frame it enters.
The only workaround is to add a frame script to each frame which manually sets the x and y position to what it should be, but this defeats the purpose of using keyframes for the position.
What is going on?
Try calling event.updateAfterEvent(), it's supposed to
Instructs Flash Player or Adobe AIR to render after processing of this event completes, if the display list has been modified.
from here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/MouseEvent.html#updateAfterEvent%28%29
This appears to have been a bug in the Flash IDE, specifically some kind of corruption in a timeline layer.
The corruption originated in Flash CS4, but persisted when opened and compiled in Flash CS5, which is why I suspect it was some kind of content-generation bug, rather than something specific to either IDE version. The IDE probably gets confused when you construct the timeline out of order or drag things around, rename things, copy things in from other files, etc. I think, specifically... it was the fact that I copied this particular object in from another file. And it wasn't even a complex object, it was just a MovieClip that contained a rounded rectangle and had a drop shadow applied, seriously.
Steps I took to resolve the issue were to remove any classes associated with the library item, reverting it back to a standard MovieClip. I then completely removed the problematic layer. I then reassigned the class to the library object and exported it for ActionScript. Finally, I rebuilt the layer from the first frame, adding subsequent keyframes as necessary. I reapplied filters, and adjusted the clips location on each frame.
Now, everything is functioning as expected. The clip's position, filters, etc. are all updated as expected when the playhead moves to any frame. It's working now as expected, so I wasn't doing anything wrong or not possible. It simply must have been some kind of incrementally constructed key framing confusion within the data structures of the IDE. Glad it's working now.
So, hypothetical situation here:
I have an SWF that's 30MB. Sound files (music) make up 25MB, art and other things make up the remaining 5MB.
Would it be possible for me to load the 5MB of necessary art and other things first to allow the user to operate the app, then after that's all loaded and they are operating the app, load the remaining 25MB of sound files in the background?
UPDATE:
Loading SWF (or other entities) externally is not an option.
You can do this by modifying the compilation settings and strategically placing the sound.
By default, anything placed on the timeline will be loaded sequentially; the Flash Player will play the SWF as soon as the first frame is loaded. If you use the default compilation settings, all library content will be placed in the first frame, so the movie doesn't start until everything is available.
You can modify these settings, however, to allow for a more sequential load order: For each of your library elements, you can uncheck "export into frame 1" in the properties window. Now these elements won't be loaded, until they appear in the main timeline. This way, if you place your content carefully, you can allow for all important elements to be loaded in the first frame, or if you have a progress bar, until the main movie starts, while all streaming elements load with the animation, which has to be placed accordingly. Make sure though, that you don't leave anything out (by not placing it on the timeline), or call elements from ActionScript before they are loaded completely. It is very important to test this thoroughly, because if anything goes wrong in the load order, your entire SWF might stop working.
Also, remember that the SWF loads sequentially: If you have a sound in, say, frame 300, and another in frame 1000, the one in 300 will be loaded first. If you jump to frame 1000 from a menu in frame 10, you have to take into account that the frame might not be loaded yet. So there has to be some sort of checking mechanism (framesLoaded) and/or dialog to inform the user about additional loading time, and prevent the application from crashing.
I am using the frames in the timeline of a .swf as pages in a flash app. The user can advance to the next page by clicking a button that takes her to the next frame. Similarly, it is possible to navigate to the previous frame/page as well.
Most of the content is placed on the stage (i.e. created by dragging an instance of a library symbol to the stage) but properties of those instances, such as .visible might be changed via actionscript. Also, some objects are loaded from external flash files and displayed programmatically with addChild / addChildAt.
The problem is, if I am on Frame N+1 and there is an object displayed on the stage programmatically (i.e. with addChild, not by having it placed on the stage) and navigate to Frame N where there is an object that is placed on the stage (i.e. dragged from the library),
then the instance of that object is undefined/null and throws an error if I try to set its properties (like .visible).
The error does not occur if I am moving to the NEXT frame, only if I am moving to the PREVIOUS one. Therefore I assume that some kind of initialization is not getting called while going one frame back.
I was also thinking that the objects would just not "live" to the next timeframe, that is, their value would be lost and re-initialized because of scope, but if there is no dynamically created object on the stage, I can navigate back and forth just fine.
Is there a way to ensure that the objects created on the stage do not disappear while navigating back to the previous frame?
The first, and more useful, part of the answer is this: timeline keyframes and scripts can give conflicting information about display objects - whether they should exist, where they should be, and so on. For example, when you add an item by playing into its frame, and then delete it with script, and then play into its frame again. When this happens, there's no unambiguously correct thing for Flash to do, so it tends to be unpredictable. I believe what generally happens is that once you fiddle with a given object via script, it's considered to no longer pay attention to the timeline - but your mileage will vary.
Having said that, the reason things are different when you play backwards is the second and more arcane part of the answer. Internally Flash functions differently when seeking forward and backwards on the timeline. Flash internally treats keyframes as changes to be applied in the forward direction, so as you play forward, it applies those changes in sequence. When you move backwards, however, from frame N+X to frame N, it doesn't scan through the intervening X frames reversing those changes - it jumps back to frame 1 and fast-forwards along to frame N. Normally, it amounts to the same thing and you don't need to worry about it, but when you get into the twitchy area where scripts and the timeline have a different idea of what should be on the stage, you're liable to see things behave differently depending on which way you jump (as you are now).
The super-short version is, for things to work predictably, try to ensure that any given object gets added, updated, and removed the same way - either all via script, or all via the timeline. When that seems impossible, fiddle with your content structure - usually, the best solution is to change your object into two nested ones, so that the things you want to do with script occur one level higher or lower than the things you want to do with the timeline.
I'm not sure I got your question right, but as3 does not instantiate elements on the timeline as soon as you gotoAndSomething, but later that frame.
That is, you can't
this.gotoAndPlay(10)
this.elementOnTimelineFrame10.DoSomething()
without errors.
I remember using this chunk of code in the past to work around this problem. It uses the Stage.Invalidate() function to wait for an Event.RENDER before trying to access and children, more info (although vague as hell) is here
private function init():void
{
stage.addEventListener(Event.RENDER, stage_renderHandler);
}
private function stage_renderHandler(evt:Event):void
{
// Run your code here
updateChildren();
}
private function enterFrameHandler(evt:Event):void
{
// triggers the RENDER event
stage.invalidate();
}
This also might me very costly (performance wise). I would strongly advise against dynamically adding/removing objects to an existing timeline, is there any way in which you can place an empty Sprite above the timeline animation and use that for all your dynamic content?
Hope this helps
I'm loading some swf files at 0 on my stage. They are the pages of my site.
To change from page to page I use removeChildAt(0) and then I addChildAt("page_title", 0).
The problem is that removeChild dont delete the functions from the first swf file loaded (before unloaded).
How can I stop then?
Do I have to use other way to removeChild?
Thanx!
It sounds to me like you aren't actually removing them. First things first, removing something from the display list is only a visual/interactive change. It is still running until you remove any references to it, being event listeners or w/e, and then you must set it to null so that garbage collection will grab it on the next cycle.
If you are using Flash Player 10, spender is correct that unloadAndStop will work for you as they just recently created it to fix your very problem.
I just thought I should explain what is going on, because people should not only know about the fix, but why things happen.
One other suggestion, I wouldn't load these movies to stage, I would create a container Sprite/MovieClip to hold them, that way even if you add other things later, they are separated, clean, and easy to access through their parent (imageContainer_mc for instance).
Assuming you are loading with a Loader you can use the unloadAndStop method.
More info here:
http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2008/07/additional_info.html
Alternatively, you can load the submovie into a different ApplicationDomain to insulate the loaded code from your main app. Take a look at the flash.system.ApplicationDomain class (it's a parameter to the Loader.load() method).