Adobe After Effects CS3 User Manual

Page 608

AFTER EFFECTS CS3

User Guide

603

Flash (SWF)

SWF files are small files that 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 following a web link or controlling
animation. To play SWF files, you need Adobe Flash Player, a plug-in for your web browser. SWF files exported from
After Effects can be played by Flash Player or imported into the Flash authoring application for additional editing.

Flash Video (FLV)

FLV files contain only pixel-based (rasterized) video, not vector graphics, and they aren’t interactive. To play a movie
in the FLV format, you must import the FLV file into Flash and publish it in a SWF file.

After Effects markers can be included as cue points in an output FLV file. To transfer keyframes or global property
values into Flash from After Effects, run the Convert Selected Properties To Markers.jsx script before rendering and

exporting an FLV file.

You render and export a movie to the FLV format using the render queue, just as you do with other formats. (See
“Render and export a movie using the render queue” on page 590.)

Important: Some applications install a QuickTime export component for Flash Video that appears as an entry in the
File > Export menu for Flash Video (FLV). Adobe recommends that you not use this command, but instead render and
export Flash Video files using the Render Queue panel. Some features, such as export of cue points from After Effects,
only work for render and export through the Render Queue panel.

To include the alpha channel in the FLV output, use the On2 VP6 codec and select Encode Alpha Channel in the
Video tab of the Adobe Flash Video export settings dialog box.

“Encoding and compression options for movies” on page 612

Render and export a composition as a Flash (SWF) file

While rendering to SWF, After Effects maintains vectors as much as possible. However, raster images, blending
modes, motion blur, some effects, and the contents of nested compositions cannot be represented as vectors in the
SWF file and are rasterized.

You can choose to ignore these unsupported items so that the SWF file includes only those After Effects features that
can be converted into native SWF elements, or you can choose to rasterize frames that contain unsupported features
and add them to the SWF file as JPEG-compressed bitmap images, which may reduce the efficiency of the SWF file.

Audio is encoded in MP3 format and added to the SWF file as an audio stream.

When After Effects creates a SWF file, it also saves a report ([SWF file_name]R.htm) to the same folder as the SWF
file. The report also contains a link to the SWF file so that you can preview the output using the Flash Player plug-
in. Open the report in a browser to view the SWF file and see which items in the composition are unsupported.