Flash 8 Cookbook

5.10. Rendering Swift 3D Animations as Flash Video

Problem

You want to convert your animation from Swift 3D straight to video for Flash (FLV) and play it with Flash.

Solution

Use the export editor to render an .flv file and then use the new FLV player in Flash to place it on your page (or use the Flash Video Player plug-in in Dreamweaver 8).

Discussion

Swift 3D 4.5 introduced the ability to export animations, both vector and raster rendered, to the FLV (Flash Video) format. This alternative provides an excellent method for displaying movies that may be too complex to run on all computers due to processor demands. It also allows use of streaming to deliver files of large size without the issues associated with preloading an .swf file.

As stated, the FLV format is available when exporting from a raster or vector render. Although it is a simple process in each case, the settings available do differ. Before getting into the specific rendering options, it should be made clear that when exporting a vector-rendered FLV, the end results will not be vector data. It will be an FLV like any other. The difference is that this affords the possibility of maintaining the look of vector rendering, which is ideal for cartoon-like animations.

Whether rendering to vector or raster, the core FLV options stay the same. These include Encoding Focus (Quality and Bandwidth) and Keyframe Interval.

Quality

This option lets you specify whether you want the FLV compression to be focused on quality or bandwidth settings. ...