Adobe After Effects - Manual (Page 738)

Rendering and exporting for Flash Professional and Flash Player
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Export a composition as an XFL file to Flash Professional
Render and export a composition as a SWF file
Render and export a composition as an FLV or F4V file
You can render and export movies from After Effects as movies that can play in Adobe Flash Player. SWF files play natively in Flash Player,
whereas an FLV or F4V file must be contained in (or linked to from) a SWF file to play in Flash Player. You can also export compositions to Flash
Professional as XFL files.
This video from the After Effects CS5: Learn By Video series provides an overview of exporting to the various formats for Flash Professional and
Flash Player, and demonstrates the use and common issues with each.
XFL
XFL files are representations of compositions that can be opened in Flash CS4 Professional or later. XFL files are essentially the XML equivalent
of FLA files.
SWF
SWF files are small files that play in Flash Player. They are often used to deliver animated vector graphics (such as cartoons), audio, and other
data types over the Internet. SWF files also allow viewer interaction, such as clicking to follow a web link, control animation, or provide input to a
rich internet application (RIA). SWF files are the output created from FLA files.
FLV and F4V
FLV and F4V files contain only pixel-based (rasterized) video, not vector graphics, and they aren’t interactive. FLA files can contain and refer to
FLV and F4V files, which are then embedded or linked in SWF files that play in Flash Player.
Export a composition as an XFL file to Flash Professional
You can export a composition from After Effects to the XFL format for further modification and use in Flash CS4 Professional or later. For example,
you can use ActionScript in Flash Professional to add interactive animation to each of the layers from an After Effects composition.
When you export a composition as an XFL file, After Effects attempts to export individual layers and keyframes, preserving as much information for
direct use in Flash Professional as it can. If After Effects can’t export an element of a composition as unrendered data in an XFL file, the element is
either ignored or rendered into a PNG or FLV item, depending on whether you choose to ignore unsupported features.
About XFL files
XFL files are essentially the XML equivalent of FLA files. An XFL file is a compressed archive folder that contains a Library folder and an XML
document (DOMDocument.xml) that describes the FLA file. The Library folder contains the assets referred to by the XML file. When you open an
XFL file in Flash Professional, it extracts these items from the XFL file and uses them to build a FLA document. You save the document from Flash
Professional as a new FLA file; you do not change the XFL file with Flash Professional.
If you want to examine or manually edit the contents of an XFL file, you can open the compressed archive file in the same manner as any other
.zip file. Changing the filename extension to .zip is not necessary, but it may make extracting the files for this manual examination more
convenient.
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