/Flash/ Optimise your Flash movies
08/05/2009 | Filed under Develop > Flash
Widen your website’s appeal by delivering its content more quickly. Paul Wyatt explains how to streamline your visuals without compromising on quality
In this miraculous 21st century with super-duper whizz-bang broadband connections, it may seem rather silly to worry about optimising Flash movies. But by not doing it you risk losing visitors to your site. There are some amazingly bloated Flash websites out there that stutter and start as they load, even on the fastest connections. The worst offenders are often film sites, and it seems common for developers to put huge, unoptimised images in Flash files, slap on a preloader and think they’re done. It goes without saying that by doing this they aren’t enhancing the user experience. If you optimise that Flash movie then the preloader won’t drag for so long, the movie will load quicker and your visitors will discover your content sooner.
Consider those visitors to your site who may be perfectly happy with their 56k dial-up modem. It’s a mistake to believe that everyone is as tech-savvy as you are. Many people have older equipment and much slower connections. Widen the appeal of your message by optimising your site as much as you can. Even 20kb trimmed from a movie is 20kb of Flash fat, which, when removed, delivers your site that bit quicker to your audience.
There are a number of ways to make your site lean and mean. We’ll look at these tips and tricks, which you’ll be able to apply to your own website or Flash banner creative. For those of you who have to produce the dreaded 35kb ad banners, and have clients who want everything but the kitchen sink in them, this tutorial will be hugely beneficial. Also on hand we have Matt Loomis, co-founder of Loomis & Jones Creative, to give us practical advice about planning website creative – including both the key considerations and some practical know-how.
The sample project is from the Paul Wyatt Portfolio website. This example uses 3D images exported from Cinema 4D as a PNG sequence. We’ll look at the best way to optimise these once they’ve been imported into Flash. We’ll also look at how Flash sound can be tweaked, the perils of embedding fonts, external file loading and optimal publish settings.
About the author:
Name: Paul Wyatt
Site: www.paulwyatt.co.uk
Areas of expertise: Interactive web design, motion graphics and video
Clients: The X Factor, Fanta, Smirnoff and Research Studios
What do you do to relax? Hmm, I guess cycle, swim and keep away from people
Click here to download the support files
Click here to download tutorial PDF
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Comments
Pete Campbell / 19/06/2009 / 08:55 / http://www.crearedesign.co.uk
Spending a little bit of time researching how you can compress your Flash movie efficiently is a great benefit when working with a client that is looking for a fast-loading website. I think these are some great tips in Image & Audio compression.
