Swish v2.0

Any tips on reducing the file sizes?

[Marketing Guy]

Hi folks

Does anyone have suggestions on how to reduce the file size of a .swf file?

Our graphic designer is ad-libing an animation for one of our new sites, but the file size is sitting at over 100k.

Are there tools that could be used to optimise the file for the web? Or an alternate format it could be saved in?

Any general tips?

Cheers
Scott :)

[BlobFisk]

Flushing out all unused assets in the library is one technique, as well as optimising all images used in the animation before importing them. By this I mean specifying the correct amount of colours in a gif file, the quality of jpeg's and resizing the image to the size needed for the movie.

[dhdweb]

This is one of the downfalls to Swish, it converts every text letter into its own graphic image as apposed to converting a block of text into a graphic!

If you can, cut the number of frames needed for the animation or reduce the amount of animation fx.

If you are importing pics such as .jpg or .gif, see blob's post above.

Hope this helps.

[kingkelly]

If you goto library in flash, you can optimize the jpegs like blobby said, and then click on update from the library. You could always save as .gif, unless its a really long animation.

Hmmm, ways to make it smaller.. Clear out some of the crap in the library youre not using anymore, replace fonts with less complex ones, reduce layers, use clear keyframe once your done with a symbol instead of having it sitting otuside of the movie space.....

[Jon_King]

Select a bitmap on a layer then:

1) Select the Shape tab to the right of the Layout area
2) Select Properties
3) Check JEPG and choose a quality level, click OK
4) Repeat for each bitmap on each layer.

By doing this you can set the compression level and hence the quality level for each bitmap in the animation.

However, if a particular bitmap does not require transparency you are always going to get a higher quality, lower file size if you first convert it to an Indexed bitmap using Photoshop before you place it in Swish.