flash (macromedia): Might also try a Save As.

Also be sure your HD is optimized.

--
Lon Hosford
www.lonhosford.com
May many happy bits flow your way!
[quoted text, click to view]
Ryan,
Thanks for the quick reply! I already have tried both of the things you
suggested, though, and neither seemed to help.
Casey

I've only been playing around with Macromedia Flash for about a year, so I'm
not all that familiar with all of the program yet. But I've been trying to
create an animation--just a straightforward cartoon--and the .fla file keeps
taking longer and longer to save to my hard drive. Originally, I was working
on a computer that had only 256 MB of RAM and a 1.3 GHz processor. When the
file started taking 10 minutes to save, I switched to working on a machine with
2.0 GB of RAM and a 2.80 GHz processor, assuming that the first computer just
didn't have enough memory or speed to handle the file. Then, a couple of weeks
later, the file (which was around 70 MB in size by that point) was taking 25-30
minutes to save. Not only that, but it often takes the program 30-40 seconds
to create new keyframes. I thought perhaps it was an issue of how much RAM
Flash was using while saving-it seemed to cap around 225 MB of RAM. I tried
setting Flash's priority higher in the Task Manager, closing out every program
that wasn't necessary for the computer to function, and nothing seemed to
change. I went through the forums here just yesterday to see if anyone had
similar problems. I saw it mentioned in a couple of places that MP3s and
nested movie clips tended to slow the program down. My fla file had lots of
both of those, so I took out the MP3s for the time being, since I can put them
back in when the animation itself is finished. And I managed to change some
things around in a part of the cartoon so that I wasn't using so many nested
movie clips. Now the file is only 20 MB, but still takes around 25 minutes to
save. I notice also that now Flash normally uses 40-50 MB of RAM while saving
the file, and doesn't seem to go any higher than 95 MB. But at this point I'm
questiong how much the RAM it's using, or has available, has to do with it.
Suffice it to say I'm at the end of my rope for what to do to speed things up,
confused, and horribly frustrated with how slow my work has become. Am I
missing something? Is there anything else I can do? Is the file getting
corrupted? Or has something gone wrong with my software? Any suggestions wold
be greatly appreciated.

Sometimes it helps to go to file, then save and compact to get rid of undo
information that the computer has to hold while you're working with your file.
You might also try getting rid of library items that are not in use and
checking to see if you can get rid of anything that's not needed... Other than
that, there's really nothing you can do in my opinion...

Hope I was of some help!
-Ryan

Ryan,
Thanks for the quick reply! I already have tried both of the things you suggested, though, and neither seemed to help.