Flash CS3: New Video Export Features = NICE!

While the new, robust import of Photoshop and Illustrator files in Flash CS3 seem to be getting a lot of attention, often overlooked are the great improvements to the export of video from Flash. Older versions of the Flash IDE allowed export to Quicktime, but nested symbols could render strangely and most importantly, no ActionScript-generated animation would render out at all.

I recently had the opportunity to create a compilation DVD of all my short films over the past decade or so and these did include some lengthy animations. I had a very difficult time transferring the animation to video but finally found a freeware solution which could render a swf into a number of different video formats. It worked out but there were still some oddities even with this process. Really wish I had this new functionality a few months back!

As an example, here is a frame of animation rendered into Quicktime through Flash 8:

There should be rain outside the window but the rain is generated by ActionScript and so does not render.

Here is the same exact frame rendered with Flash CS3:

Awesome!

4 thoughts on “Flash CS3: New Video Export Features = NICE!”

  1. I’ve tested it now and it’s indeed a great feature. A complex example of mine (with papervision code and all!) exported perfectly.

    You can’t interact with the interface while exporting, something which’s a negative point on most cases (ie, when creating demo reel sequences); but having the ability to export 100% quality, faithful actionscript-based movies is enough, you can still simulate what’s needed by code.

  2. I’ve been trying to export 2 CS3 Fla animation movies (AS2 code) to QT here; somehow apparently the process is pretty slow, as I get very long waiting time when the process bar is at finished, but Flash keeps computing *something* at 100% of 1 CPU for extended periods of time (15 + minutes); I’ve never gotten to the actual .mov stage.
    Is that QT compressing the animation, or is something broken, in your opinion?
    (There are AS calls to a root container movie, so maybe that’s what breaks it?)

    Otherwise, this looks really good.

  3. I’ve noticed that when exporting an FLV from Premiere Pro (CS2) that it will first render the movie (using QuickTime, I’d assume) and then once that is completed with the progress bar reading 100%, the media encoder will then render this as Flash Video with the appearence of the proceess being hung or stalled. I also assume that this two-step render process is being performed via the new QuickTime export in some fashion. I really can only guess though! I think it’s most likely normal behavior.

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