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Trouble with .swf (A Russian-doll-sized problem)
Hi all,
This is my first post on this website, though it’s helped me out before. First I have to confess I’m a bit of an AE newbie, and this is really an After Effect and Flash problem. But here it is:
I’m making an animation with adobe Flash (CS4), using jpgs I created in photoshop. This animation has a motion tweened graphic. Inside the graphic is an armature, and one of the symbols in the armature is a three-frame “movie-clip”. (The animation features a pan shot of a doorway through which a character enters and smiles.) So there are a lot of layers to it.
Now I had to make the final symbol a movie clip, because if I make it a graphic, the swf get’s really skrewy.
But, Here’s the problem:
After much hair-pulling, I’ve given up trying to export the file to quicktime using flash. (For whatever reason, the movie plays terribly choppy) So I’m trying to use AE to import the swf and create a quicktime movie. I can do this fine with a simple swf, but with this particular one, it ignores the final movie-clip, that’s within the armature, that’s within the tweened graphic. (So the character’s expression doesn’t change) This occurs as soon as I open the swf using AE and start fiddling around with it.
I have absolutely no idea what is going on, or how to even attempt to solve this problem. It should be noted that the .swf plays fine with the flash player.
Can anyone help at all? Or is there a superior way to make my flash file/ .swf into a movie that I am unaware of?
Thank you,
Andrius
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3 Replies
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From Working with Flash and After Effects [link] in the manual (emphasis mine):
Flash has a unique set of vector art tools that make it useful for a variety of drawing tasks not possible in After Effects or Adobe® Illustrator®. You can import SWF files into After Effects to composite them with other video or render them as video with additional creative effects. Interactive content and scripted animation are not retained. Animation defined by keyframes is retained.
Perhaps the movie controller is scripted, preventing your SWF from importing in AE as you expect?
[Andrius Kell] “Or is there a superior way to make my flash file/ .swf into a movie that I am unaware of?”
I don’t know how many Flash experts hang out around here — you might have better luck in a Flash forum.
I used to export EPS sequences from Flash for import into After Effects, but I believe this feature was removed in CS5.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
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As Walter points out, there are limitations to what is honored in SWF import into After Effects. It seems that the limitation that you’ve hit is the fact that animation in the top-level timeline is retained. The animation in your nested movie clip isn’t being retained.
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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
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Thanks for the help. Wish there was some sort of fix, but oh well.
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