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How to create smooth animations from Flash files
I need some advice, please, on how best to create good quality video files from a Flash animation.
I have produced a series of files of hand drawn animated elements using 720×576, 15 frames/sec in Flash.
I export these individual files from Flash, selecting Windows avi as the type, then setting the same size and full frames uncompressed in the windows that appear before the export starts.
After that, I bring the exported avi files into Premiere to combine them and add the transitions, titles, sounds that I want.
If I export the timeline to tape from Premiere to my DV camcorder, the resulting video when played from the tape to a tv screen looks fairly good.
If I render the Premiere timeline to a movie using Microsoft DV avi, full size PAL and 25 fps, I am prompted to set interlaced no fields, lower or upper field or deinterlaced. I have tried all these options, but they all look worse than the quality of the DV tape version. They each produced files of about 330 MB for a 1:30 minute timeline. I also tried to set no compression and produced a 1.5 Gig file, which looked no better.
I have also tried the use the Adobe media encoder in Premiere selecting Windows media format and WM9 Pal download 1024 to produce a 12 MB file of the timeline. This one looks as good as any of the other files created in Premiere, but still not as good as the quality on the DV tape export.
The problem is that none of the final movie files look that smooth. Some visual elements seem to shimmer and slightly change colour, and the motion doesn’t look very smooth and you can see some ghost images in the motions. I realize that at 15 fps there will be some sense of jerkiness from an animation, but the video files I’ve made so far look worse that the movie preview I can see in Flash when I run test movie.
Is there a better way to create good files from the Flash timeline to import into Premiere?
Should I use a different frame rate in the Flash file? I’ve heard that one should use a multiple of the target file format, so would 12.5 fps in Flash create better exports for a 25fps PAL movie than my 15 fps? Do I need to go to 25 fps in the Flash file properties?
Should I try to export to something other than Windows avi from Flash, such as Flash movie or QuickTime? I know that QuickTime are importable into Premiere but I don’t think that Flash movie files are.
Is there anything I should set differently in Premiere?
Thanks a lot for any advice.
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1 Reply
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Create your animation at 30 fps in flash, export as uncompressed QT or Windows AVI with no fields. Also export a Shockwave video file if your targets can play that.
Import into a Pro DV project. The best export option is Window’s Media Video 2.1 Mbps for local playback from a HD and many CD ROMs. Dont fool with a DV version. Make a DVD if you wish.
I think After Effects can do a better job than Flash at creating motion graphics with options like frame blending and motion blur. AE can also export as WMV.
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