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.
Related
I'm loading dynamic loading of all my SWCs in my master SWF, in order to load master swf faster, however now I need to cache all my swcs in local machine to speed up things.
private function loadAssets():void
{
swcObj=new Object();
swcObj.swcPath='assets/swc/1.swc';
swcObj.className="Part_0_1";
swcs.push(swcObj);
swcObj=new Object();
swcObj.swcPath='assets/swc/2.swc';
swcObj.className="0_2";
swcs.push(swcObj);
swcObj=new Object();
swcObj.swcPath='assets/swc/3.swc';
swcObj.className="0_3";
swcs.push(swcObj);
}
Then I'm using this array to use all the classes in my project, but I have no idea how to cache these swcs for faster use, if anyone have idea, please share.
In fact, the browser does this pre-caching for you, you don't need to produce extra efforts. So, just load them normally and don't worry about caching. You can, however, motivate the user to increase their local browser cache in order to potentially lessen time spent on waiting while your assets are loaded, but this won't help should the user watch three tons of YouTube each day.
SWC files are not intended for dynamic loading.
They are static libraries that can be linked in a swf using
-include-libraries and library-path options of mxmlc or - since you seem to be using FlashDevelop - SWC Include Libraries and SWC Libraries in Project>Compiler options
. SWC's may hold code (classes), assets (symbols/bitmaps/sounds...) or combination of the two.
Loading assets dynamically is done through flash.display.Loader
you may use the Loader as a simple DisplayObject instance that you add on stage:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/display/Loader.html#includeExamplesSummary
, or use its ApplicationDomain as a library of Class definitions that will allow you to create instances at will :
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/system/ApplicationDomain.html#includeExamplesSummary
Caching from the browser will be sufficient in most cases, unless you have VERY specific needs
In the end, there is different ways to optimize loading times, one of which is having a small swf acting as loader/home menu, and loading rest of the content on demand like you seem to try doing, but you can also create a single swf with several frames, which will be "streamed" by flash player, example:
1st frame as small as possible holding just a few kb for a splash screen/logo/loading/whatever you want, to make the initial blank screen as short as possible, then second frame holding the main content. You can event extent this system with for instance
two levels of preloader: a first tiny frame with just a logo, second one with progress bar, and full background if needed
split content like home screen/menus in a frame, gameplay in the another, if you are making a game, so that gameplay continues loading while you are already displaying the menu
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 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.
How does the browser load flash files? Do they load progressively, or does the browser wait until the entire flash file is loaded before displaying it?
The reason is I have a tiny clip that is extremely high in quality, only a few seconds long, but it's over 4 mb.
Will the user have to wait until all 4 mb is loaded before viewing? Or does it load as the user watches it?
I didn't do anything fancy, I just imported a .flv into Flash, and exported as a .swf.
Thank you in advanced
There are many parts to loading a flash file, and more generically, an HTML page.
I'm going to start from the top with the HTML page, and I urge others to correct any mistakes I may have made.
Loading a Page
When an HTML page is received, the browser parses it into the Document Object Model (DOM) so that it has a programmatic representation of every element. Browsers iterate over every node in the DOM tree and populate it as-needed.
For most nodes this is simply creating a new DOM element like a div, p, or a; however some content requires loading or replacement.
form elements (input, select, button, textarea) are replaced with the browser-specific representation of those form fields.
link elements used as stylesheets are asynchronously loaded. The DOM continues to parse the page as the external resource is being loaded.
script elements on the other hand, are synchronously loaded. The DOM is unable to continue parsing the tree until the script has finished loading and executing, with exceptions for if the loading failed or the execution had an error.
img elements are asynchronously loaded, but allow for the onload callback to determine when they have finished loading. The DOM can't trigger the window's onload event until all img elements have finished loading (or failed).
Understanding the basic elements helps with understanding more involved elements like object, embed, and iframe, which are also replaced content.
Flash is typically embedded on a webpage using object, embed and iframe.
As far as I'm aware, object and embed elements react similarly so I will shortcut and say object from here on out.
There are distinct differences between loading flash in iframe and object elements.
The object element is very similar to a script element where the content must be successfully loaded and executed before the DOM can continue to be parsed.
The iframe element is very similar to an img element where the contents are loaded asynchronously, but a callback may be used to determine when the loading has finished (although I'm not sure about whether the callback is available for cross-domain requests).
Loading Flash
The previous section discusses just the HTML side of content loading. However, there are a number of nuances within flash that can severely affect the load time of a flash movie.
As I stated before, script elements must be fully loaded and executed before the DOM can continue being parsed. A similar effect is found within Flash files (even when included via an iframe). All resources embedded within the swf must be loaded before the swf can release its hold on the page loading progress.
If you've embedded a video directly into the timeline, the entire video must load before flash can be considered done with its initial execution.
If, instead, you chose to use an asynchronous callback to start loading an external resource that happened to be a video, and used an asynchronous loader to load the video, you wouldn't have to wait for the video to be finished loading before the rest of the page could be loaded; within flash, you'd still need to wait for the video to finish loading before beginning playback of the video.
Alternatively, there are a number of means within flash to either stream videos, or progressively load a video from a server, which would enable the video to be played without being finished loading. My experience with that particular aspect of flash is minimal, so I won't explain how it's done.
Using a library like swfobject allows the desired swf to be loaded asynchronously so that flash loading is non-blocking.
tl; dr:
Flash files may be loaded progressively depending on how you've structured your HTML, and what code is running in the swf.
You may want to look into swfobject
swf files are loaded progressively (hence loader bars, "50% loaded" messages and such).
Historically, Flash files are based on frames, and if the main timeline has multiple frames, they will be loaded and displayed in sequence, as soon as they are loaded, before the entire file is loaded. However, most Flash content nowadays is not constructed that way, and are more complex than a series of frames that are displayed in sequence. Video playback also adds complexity beyond the basic frame model, with video codecs, audio synch and such.
So the answer to the question "Do they load progressively, or does the browser wait until the entire flash file is loaded before displaying it?" is that they load progressively and are displayed before the entire swf files is loaded. But how this will effect how the users experience your video is hard to tell without seeing it or how it is constructed.
It will load the entire movie first. So make your video an external file that the movie loads when it runs.
I have two flash movies, on different tabs of a user's browser.
They use LocalConnection to talk to each other, but the one on the tab which isn't active doesn't do anything until you switch back to that tab, can you change this? Maybe in the embed tag?
One of the things that Adobe changed about the Flash player after 10.1, in order to make it consume less CPU cycles was to force the player to only execute at 2fps (or some other ridiculously low amount) when the swf is no longer in focus (or even if it's still "in focus" but not being rendered to the screen by virtue of being in a section of the browser window that's scrolled offscreen.
I'm not aware of anything inherent to the new Flash player that would prevent LocalConnection from working, though. Do you have listeners set up to detect whether the swfs in question are active or not before they attempt to make any calls?