flash (macromedia): Have you generated an output report? Go into your swf publishing preferences
and choose to create one. Then open it and use it. This will show you want size
all of your assets are and what frame they are being exported in.

My guess is that you are using some components (or have them in your library
even though you aren't using them). Or perhaps you have some assets checked to
export for Actionscript?

In any event, Frame One must be fully loaded before anything (ANYTHING) can
happen. So if you have assets in the first frame ? and say they are 90% of the
size of your file ? then your preloader won't be able to run until it gets to
90%.

Hi ... I wanted to get in on this as well since I am having the same problem.

We have a simple slide show on the home page:

www.kipiis.com

we built a preloader in the first 10 frames to loop the first image over and
over until the whole thing loads, then it jumps ahead to frame 10 and carries
on. Fine. But it still takes forever to load on a slow connection. Is it trying
to load the whole movie? How does your browser know to only load the first few
frames of the Flash file?

Going back to what RVnFlash said: "how can a preloader work properly, since
the preloader frames themselves won't begin playing until the entire movie has
loaded? "

Anybody?

Hi there,

Rothrock, you were right on the money. The movie has 3 sound files in it.
Out of a total movie size of ~520K, those sound files are about ~495K. They
are not being used until later frames in the main scene, but guess what, they
are all included in the Frame Bytes for Frame ONE of the Preloader scene! I
suspect I will need to break this into 2 separate movies; the Main movie, and a
Preloader movie that will attach my preloading routine to a loadMovie() action.
Either that or develop a preloader for the sound files {grin}

David, regarding your comments on the use of different scenes (or lack of
use), I picked this particular preloader right out of a Flash reference manual
by Derek Franklin. He highly recommends the use of multiple scenes. Quite
frankly I haven't used multiple scenes before (haven't had the need) but I
think I know what you are saying. The routine did NOT work right out of the
book; I had to play around with it and make some adjustments; it wasn't
breaking out of the Preloader loop and going to the Main Scene (it was in an
infinite loop). I think when I redo this whole thing, I'll just stay away from
multiple scenes. Thanks.

sroberts, you might try what Rothrock suggested and generate an Output Report.
You might be having the same problem as I am; all (or most) of your assets are
ending up in the first frame. And as he said, that first frame must load
entirely before anything else happens.

Thanks to all who responded. I need to get to work on another preloader :)

RVnFlash

Glad I could help. The size report is one of the best ? and most often
overlooked ? tools for optimizing your swf.

There are many tricks and strategies for moving things out of frame one or
preloading external files. Different ways are appropriate for different
situations. Search around the forums to get some ideas.

Rothrock,

Let me ask you (or anyone) one more question while we're on this subject. Is
it correct to say that Flash "normally" will load the entire movie before it
starts to play, but by using a preloader and the gotoAndPlay() action when X%
is loaded that you are actually "forcing" Flash to start playing the movie
before it competely loads (whew, long statement)? Thanks.

RVnFlash

Actually you have it backwards. The cool thing about Flash is that it will
start to play before everything is downloaded. The downside is that if you
don't do something to keep it from catching up with the download it can stutter
? especially on a slow connection. So actually the preloader is "forcing" the
playback to go against its natural state.

Thanks for the info. It now makes perfect sense as to how a preloader would
work, assuming you don't put the entire movie in the first frame {grin} I
would then guess that, for larger movies, a preloader is almost a must-have.
It not only informs the visitor of the status of the download, but also acts as
a sort of protection against a possible sloppy movie (at least the first time
through) for those with a slower connection. Interesting! Thanks again for
your help and your input.

RVnFlash

Hello,

I'm wondering what I'm missing regarding Preloaders. I'm using Flash MX. As
for me, I have some experience with Flash but am by no means a heavyweight.
So, I built a flash movie and tested it. When I load the flash page, I'm
waiting approx. 30 seconds with a blank screen while flash loads the entire
movie and then begins to play. So, I decided to add a preloader so visitors
won't be sitting and waiting with that blank screen, and they can see how far
along the loading process is.

There are a ton of sample preloaders on the net, but they all work basically
the same. They take the first few frames, calculate percent loaded, display an
ever-increasing bar and percent-loaded text, and when the movie is approx. 90%
or so loaded, it will go to, as an example, Frame 10 and start playing the main
movie. I put one of these in and, in essence, it works.

But ..... Here's where I'm missing something, and this is what's happening.
When I load the flash page with the preloader, I still sit there with a blank
screen for 30 seconds or so while the whole movie loads. Then, when the entire
movie has loaded, it begins playing at Frame 1. But Frame 1 is now my
preloader. So what happens is this - since the whole movie has already loaded,
it displays the entire bar and "100% Loaded" text for a split second, then
continues on with the main movie.

So, what am I missing here? If a movie without a preloader must load entirely
before playing, how can a preloader work properly, since the preloader frames
themselves won't begin playing until the entire movie has loaded? And mine,
obviously, does not work like it should. Does my question make sense? Any
help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

RVnFlash

Thanks, shellshock. But, the stop() action is there. I'm using a two-scene
approach. Scene1 is my preloader. The first frame of Scene1 contains the
stop() action. Then it loops until percent loaded is > 90%, at which time it
has a gotoAndPlay to Frame 1 of Scene2, which is my main movie.

I also tried another version with the preloader in the first few frames of the
main movie. It also had a stop() action.

Thanks for the reply.

scenes are bad mkay!
drugs are bad, mkay!

Seriously, my bad south park reference aside, I have almost never heard or
read about any flash movie work well with scenes, especially bouncing back
and forth. I have spoken to a lot of flash guru's Brandon Hall, Josh Davis,
and they agree.

I'm not sure why, and don't let me scare you but I've seen almost all of the
iterations of flash starting with Futuresplash. I have never had a positive
experience with Scenes.


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I hope I'm not getting on this too late, but I am having a similar problem. I,
too, have a massive Frame 1 load, but the only thing that seems to eleviate it
is wiping out all the video components and changing my publishing setting to
ActionScript 1.0. It then drops to a more manageable 6K (from 128K!). I have
printed out the report, but it doesn't tell me WHAT is loading in frame one,
just that A LOT is...

Right now I have 5 large videos (under 2 minute/6-10MG .flv files) that I'm
trying to incorporate. Are they just too big? I've tried adjusting for
quality/file size, but that didn't seem to effect the load time.

Any direction/clarification/HELP would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.