Exercise 63 Use a Flash movie clip symbol to store an animation that you need to use more than once in an application. This is very important for keeping file size small, because you store the animation once as a symbol and insert instances when you need them. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

Terms Movie clip – A movie segment. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

Create a Movie Clip Symbol Use movie clip symbols to store animated sequences that you can reuse many times. If you create an animation of a logo, you might want to use it in different places throughout an animation. You create the symbol by choosing the Insert>New Symbol command. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

In the Create New Symbol dialog box: Enter a name for the movie symbol Select Movie clip Click OK. You can convert an animation sequence you create on the Stage with the main Timeline into a movie symbol, or You can create a blank movie clip symbol and then create the sequence in symbol editing mode. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

You can even replace the original animated sequence with an instance. Once you create the movie clip symbol, you can insert an instance in any keyframe by dragging it from the Library. You can even replace the original animated sequence with an instance. Since an instance of a movie clip symbol takes up only a single frame in the main Timeline, it is an efficient way to minimize file size. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

The movie clip Timeline plays independently from the main Timeline. Movie clips can also help simplify the main Timeline because you can replace multiple layers and frames with a single keyframe. The movie clip Timeline plays independently from the main Timeline. To see the movie clip Timeline, you must change to symbol editing mode. To play the entire animation including the movie clip, use the Test movie command. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

When you Test the animation, Flash exports the animation to a Flash movie file and plays it in a separate Flash Player window in a continuous loop. The movie file is stored in the same location with the same name as the document file. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

Assignment Page 348 S_63bee Page 349 – SO_63walking Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

Transparent Images Making an area of your image transparent does not reduce the size of the GIF. To make a part of your GIF image transparent, you use the Optimize panel to choose the colors you want to make transparent. The colors you make transparent will allow a background image to show through the color when the image is displayed on the Web. Fireworks displays a transparent area using a gray and white checkerboard pattern when you preview the image. Interlacing makes images appear first as a low quality image that improves as all of the data in the image file is downloaded. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Advanced Graphics and Animation : Lesson 7, Exercise 61

Working with JPEGs JPEG format is ideal for digital photos because it enables you to reduce the size of an image while you adjust the quality of the image. That is, you can greatly reduce the file size without much noticeable effect on the quality. JPEG compression works by replacing areas of an image with rectangular blocks that are a single color. When an image is viewed at normal size, there is typically little reduction in quality; but when you zoom the image, you can see the color blocks. You adjust the JPEG compression level using the Quality option in the Optimize panel. Higher values produce better quality. Because JPEG compression discards data, you can never recover details that are lost once you save a JPEG image that you have compressed. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Advanced Graphics and Animation : Lesson 7, Exercise 62

Movie Clip Symbol in Flash Use movie clip symbols to store animated sequences that you can reuse many times. For example, if you create an animation of a logo, you might want to use it in different places throughout an animation. You create the symbol by choosing the Insert > New Symbol command. In the Create New Symbol dialog box, enter a name for the movie symbol, select Movie clip, and click OK. Once you create the movie clip symbol, you can insert an instance in any keyframe by dragging it from the Library; you can even replace the original animated sequence with an instance. Since an instance of a movie clip symbol takes up only a single keyframe in the main Timeline, it is an efficient way to minimize file size. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Advanced Graphics and Animation : Lesson 7, Exercise 63

Movie Explorer in Flash Use the Movie Explorer to view and organize the contents of a document, to locate an element by name, to locate all instances of a specific symbol, or to select elements in the document. The Movie Explorer opens in a panel and displays a hierarchical list of elements currently used in the document. Expand or collapse the display to show or hide elements that branch off of other elements. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Advanced Graphics and Animation : Lesson 7, Exercise 64

Motion Presets Motion presets are built-in animations that you can apply to text blocks, graphics, bitmap images, or button symbols. Use the Window > Motion Preset menu command to display your choices. The Motion Presets dialog box offers two folders: Default Presets Custom Presets In the Motion Preset dialog box, you can click the various presets in the Default Presets folder to see a preview of the motion before you apply it. To add the preset to the selected object, click Apply. When you apply an effect to an element, Flash inserts keyframes automatically on the current layer. Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall Advanced Graphics and Animation : Lesson 7, Exercise 64