Next, change the behavior of the instance from Single Frame to either Loop or Play Once, depending on your needs (see Figure 12). Make sure there are enough frames on the main Timeline to accommodate the graphic symbol's length. To lengthen the timeline, choose a frame in the Timeline panel that represents the duration of the movie and select Insert > Timeline > Frame (or press F5). You will now be able to drag the playhead back and forth (or press Enter) to see your nested animation play.

In general, when you author content for video, avoid dynamic content completely. Flash documents that include ActionScript, buttons, and dynamically loaded content will fail during export. Even a simple stop(); action causes the export to fail. But if you do have dynamic content, read the later section on SWF2Video.

Exporting to Video
Your movie is now ready for exporting. You have the right aspect ratio, frame rate, and colors, and everything is on the main Timeline or set as Graphic symbols. You're good to go.

You have more than one option when you export your video, and there are slight differences depending on whether you are authoring in Mac OS or Windows.

Basically it comes down to three different options: AVI (Audio Video Interleave), Apple QuickTime, or an image sequence. Formerly your choice of platform dictated your format. Macintosh users exported to QuickTime and Windows users exported to AVI. Now both formats are compatible across platforms.

AVI and QuickTime Export Settings
Mac users have the option of exporting to QuickTime video, which results in a true pixel-based video file. Exporting to QuickTime on Windows produces just a Flash movie in QuickTime Player; it is not a pixel-based video file. The only way to export to a true pixel-based video format in Windows is to purchase QuickTime Pro (currently US$29.99 from Apple Computer), open the exported movie from Flash in QuickTime Pro, and then export it again as a QuickTime movie.

When you export from Flash to AVI or QuickTime, you will have a few options from which to choose. Typically it is a good practice to keep your movie as uncompressed as possible and at the highest color bit available.

QuickTime Export Settings
There are many settings you can make in the Export QuickTime dialog box (see Figure 13):

• Dimensions: Enter a width and height in pixels for the exported QuickTime video, or select Match Movie to make the QuickTime video the same size as the Flash SWF file and keep its aspect ratio.

  Alpha: Control the transparency mode of your movie, as follows:
  

• Alpha Transparent makes the Flash background transparent, allowing content behind it to be visible
• Copy makes the Flash track opaque and masks all content in tracks (layers within the QuickTime wrapper) behind the Flash track
• Auto makes the Flash track transparent if it's on top of any other tracks and opaque if it's the bottom (or only) track in the SWF file

  Layer: Select where in the stacking order the Flash movie resides, as follows:
  

• Top places the Flash track always on top of other tracks in the QuickTime video
• Bottom positions the Flash track behind other tracks
• Auto positions the Flash track in front of other tracks if any Flash objects are in front of video objects in the Flash application, and behind all other tracks if Flash objects are not in front
• Streaming Sound: Export all streaming audio used in the Flash project to a QuickTime soundtrack.
• Controller: Specify the QuickTime controller style used to play the exported video: None, Standard, or QuickTime VR.
• Loop: Repeat the video when it reaches the last frame.
• Paused at Start: Pause the video until some user interaction occurs.
• Play Every Frame: Play every frame of the movie without skipping (sound is disabled).
• File Flatten (Make Self-Contained): Combine the Flash content and imported video content into a single QuickTime video file, making it easy to distribute and archive.

Deselecting this option links the QuickTime file to whatever external files compose it. This keeps the QuickTime file size consequently smaller. It's also useful if you ever want to edit one or more of the dependant files individually. Once you update them, the QuickTime movie reflects your changes because it references them externally. Of course, if you ever move, delete, or corrupt any referenced file, the QuickTime movie will not be able to show it.

AVI Export Settings
There are not as many settings to make in the Export Windows AVI dialog box as there are for QuickTime (see Figure 14):

• Dimensions: Enter a width and height in pixels for the exported AVI video. Check the Maintain Aspect Ratio option to keep the same aspect ratio as your Flash movie.
• Video Format: Select 18-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit color or 32-bit with Alpha format. An 18-, 16-, and 24-bit color represents eight bits for every RGB color value. A 32-bit color is the same, with the addition of eight more bits representing the transparency of the color value.
• Compress Video: Display a dialog box allowing you to select from a list of standard AVI compression options.
• Smooth: Apply anti-aliasing to the exported AVI movie.
• Sound Format: Set the sampling rate and size of the soundtrack (if sound is present) and whether to export it in mono or stereo.

Handling Audio
If your Flash project contains any audio, there are some important technical details you need to consider. Quality is important, specifically sounds recorded in stereo at a 44.1 kHz sampling rate and 16-bit depth. When you develop a project for video output, it is always best to record at the highest quality whenever possible.

Working with Compressed Audio
In a situation where your sound file is relatively long, say five minutes or more, it may be best to convert it to a compressed format that Flash can import, such as MP3. Once you convert your audio file to a compressed format, the file size will be much easier to work with. Importing a compressed version of the sound into Flash also helps keep the movie file size manageable. Just make sure to retain a backup copy of the original high-quality sound file so you can reimport it into your Flash file for final export later.

Speaking of length, the actual running time of a half-hour television program is approximately 22 minutes. But working with a 22-minute Timeline in Flash is potentially problematic. At 30 frames per second, a 22-minute animation ends up being 39,600 frames long. Because Flash is not really capable of handling timelines of this length, instability can become a factor. To avoid crashing and the potential of a corrupt file, break up the audio into smaller chunks and import them into several different Flash files that you can later stitch together in your video editing program. I recommend that you work in smaller durations, somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds long.

There are a number of useful audio editing tools available to edit your sound files. My personal favorites are Sound Forge Audio Studio and Vegas, both from Sony. They run only in Windows. Adobe Audition is another choice for Windows users. For Mac users, there's Soundtrack Pro from Apple. If you are on a budget, try Audacity, a very capable and open-source (free) audio editing tool available for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux.

When your animation is complete and you are ready to export it to video, delete the compressed sound files from the Flash movie. Export only the animation to your chosen video format and then import this video file, along with the original high-quality sound files, into your video editing program of choice, such as Adobe Premiere or Apple Final Cut Pro. This method not only keeps your FLA sizes to a minimum but also provides some editing flexibility because both sound and animation are maintained on separate tracks for further editing.

Synchronizing Animation with Sound
To sync your animation with the imported audio in Flash, you must embed the audio in the main Timeline. Select File > Import and locate the audio file on your hard drive. Once it's imported, create a new layer on your main Timeline, select the first keyframe in this new layer, and locate the sound file in the Property inspector from the Sound pop-up menu.

By default, the sound behavior is set to Event. An Event sound plays in its entirety, independent of the Timeline, and does not ensure proper synchronization with the animation. You can change the behavior from Event to Stream by selecting the Sync pop-up menu in the Property inspector. When you set the sound to Stream, you will be able to grab the playhead and move it back and forth across the Timeline and hear the sound play. This is called scrubbing. Sound files, when set to Stream, are embedded in the Timeline and will be in sync with the animation that resides on the Timeline and any graphic symbols containing nested animation.

Exporting Dynamic Content with SWF2Video
I know I said earlier that when you author content for video, avoid dynamic content completely, but when it comes to exporting a Flash movie with dynamic content-anything that requires user input or that goes beyond just time-based animation (for example, using ActionScript)-you do have solutions.

One such solution is SWF2Video by Flashants, a powerful utility that converts SWFs published from Flash to AVI format. This includes movie clips, ActionScript events, human interactions, and audio.

The SWF2Video interface is surprisingly simple. Select File > Open and navigate to the SWF movie published from Flash and choose File > Create AVI. After naming your AVI file, you will be presented with the AVI Export Setting dialog box. From here you can select how the sequence is exported as well as edit the dimensions, apply compression or leave as uncompressed, set audio options (if any), and more.

The SWF2Video IDE is amazingly simple. Upon launch there's little more than a window with the familiar File, Control, Options, and Help menus. Select File > Open and navigate to your SWF. Open the File menu again and select Create AVI (see Figure 15) or Create Image Sequence. SWF2Video even supports batch processing of files.

When you select Create AVI, the AVI Export Setting dialog box opens, allowing you to refine your movie considerably further (see Figure 16).

The Sequence settings are as follows:

• Skip "goto backward frame" in main timeline: If the Flash movie contains a loop in the main Timeline by using the gotoAndPlay(0); command, select this option to break the loop by ignoring the ActionScript code.
• Frame by frame in main timeline: Convert the main Timeline animation into a keyframe sequence.
• Normal: Convert with the movie's normal playback sequence, including movie clips and ActionScript events.

For the Duration setting, specify the start and end points during export by entering the exact frame numbers.

There are several Video settings to make as well:

• Frame rate: Default is the original setting of the movie. If you modify this value, the output video will be faster or slower than the original movie.
• Color Depth: Select 24 bits RGB or 32 bits RGB with Alpha format. The 24-bit color setting represents eight bits for every RGB color value. The 32-bit color setting is the same as 24 bits with the addition of eight more bits representing the transparency of the color value.

Clicking Select in the Video section opens the Video Compression dialog box (see Figure 17). Here you can choose the appropriate compressor to apply to your video. Leave this set to Full Frames (Uncompressed) because this is always best when working with high-quality video. People do not generally compress this because otherwise loss of quality will occur.