Exporting Other Media Types

Believe it or not, Flash can export even more media types than those listed in the Publish Settings dialog box. Just select File, Export, Export Movie, and you'll see a list under the Save as Type drop-down list that's quite long (see Figure 24.12). In addition to the formats listed in the Publish Settings dialog box, you might see others that interest you. The following sections cover two formats you might find particularly useful: AVI and image sequences.

Figure 24.12. All the formats Flash can export (including those found in the Publish Settings dialog box) are listed in the Export Movie dialog box.

Publishing AVI Files

AVI is another digital video format. It's available only by selecting File, Export, Export Movie and then choosing AVI from the Save as Type drop-down list in the Export Movie dialog box. Similar to the limits of QuickTime I'd avoid AVI. In fact, there are so many limits when exporting AVIs (such as Movie Clips don't play only Graphic instances) that you'll often get better results simply doing a screen capture while your .swf plays. TechSmith's Camtasia software works great for this (www.camtasia.com).

Publishing Image Sequences

Image Sequences is another option that is available only in the Export Movie dialog box. A bitmap sequence, for example, will export a static BMP file of each frame in your movie. Several sequence formats are available (refer to Figure 24.12). They're all basically the same only the file format varies. The process is the same for each format. You select File, Export, Export Movie, select the file format from the Export Movie dialog box, and then name the file. The name you give will be used only as the prefix. For example, if you name the file myMovie, the filename containing Frame 1 will be called myMovie0001.bmp (or whatever file extension matches the type you're exporting). After you name the file and click Save, you'll be shown a dialog box in which you can specify the details for the selected file type. It's sort of a mini version of the Publish tab. For bitmap sequences, you have to specify details for bitmaps, for example.

You might be intending to create an animation in another software package that can import sequences of static images. For example, if you have an animated GIF-creation tool, you could import a sequence of high-quality bitmaps that Flash exported. You could also use the static images from a QuickTime video inside Flash. Because you can't actually use QuickTime video in a .swf file, you could first import a QuickTime video into Flash, export a sequence of high-quality BMP files, and then delete the QuickTime video from your Flash file and import the BMP files into Flash. What's really convenient is that the numbered BMP files that Flash created upon export will be imported sequentially and placed in separate keyframes, thus saving you what would otherwise be a painstaking task of importing many individual frames.

Similarly to exporting AVI files, when you export image sequences, you can't use movie clips (they just don't animate). Obviously, audio won't have any effect either because you're exporting images only. This might seem like the least likely use for Flash; however, you should realize that any time you see something that looks like video in Flash, you're probably just watching a sequence of static images.