Using the Bandwidth Profiler

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Before you publish your movie, you should check to see how your users might view it on the Web. You can do this in Flash by using the Bandwidth Profiler in test-movie mode.

The Bandwidth Profiler provides a graphical representation of your movie's size by frame. You can use the Debug menu to choose a modem speed for the Bandwidth Profiler to emulate. Any item above the red line will cause some download-performance issues at the modem speed you choose from the Debug menu.

1. Open zoo34.fla from the FlashTFS folder, and choose Control > Test Movie.

   

   You created zoo34.fla in Lesson 7. If you cannot find a copy of this file in the FlashTFS folder on your hard drive, you can find it in the Lesson11/Starting folder on the CD-ROM.

2. Choose View > Bandwidth Profiler to open the Bandwidth Profiler.

   

   If this menu option is checked, the Bandwidth Profiler is already open. The left side of the Bandwidth Profiler contains basic movie information: dimensions, file size, length, and frame rate. The right side contains a graph showing the size of the file in each frame. The red line in the graph indicates whether a given frame streams in real time at the current modem speed set in the Control menu. If a bar extends above the red line, the movie must wait for that frame to load.

   Notice that right now, the bar extends above the red line in a couple of places. The bar(s) mean that Flash will have to pause to load the content for those frames before the movie can play. You should also take note of the file size, which is listed in the area to the left of the graph. At this point, the movie should be approximately 47 KB. In the next exercise you will optimize the movie to bring that file size down.

   TIP

   Now that you have set up the test movie to show the Bandwidth Profiler, each movie you test will include this feature. To toggle the profiler on and off, choose View > Bandwidth Profiler.

3. Choose Debug >56 k (4.7 KB/s); then choose View > Show Streaming.

   

   A green bar appears at the top of the Bandwidth Profiler to indicate how much of the movie has been loaded. When you turn on the Show Streaming option, the movie plays as though you're using a modem to look at the Web, at the same speed you chose from the Debug menu. You should see that the green bar stops moving at places where the bar(s) extend above the red line.

   Don't rely solely on the Bandwidth Profiler to test your movie's performance. You should always test your movie over a variety of Internet connections, and on different computers and operating systems. You should also generate a size report when you publish your movie, as you will see later in this lesson.

4. Close the Test Movie window.

   You haven't made any changes, so you don't need to save the movie at this point.

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