Flash 101 (part 5): Spiralling Out Of Control - Projecting Your Image (
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Once you've created a
Flash movie, it's common to immediately export it as an SWF file and embed it
into a Web page. However, Flash also allows you to export your movie in various
other formats. For example, if you take a look at the File -> Export Movie
command, you'll see that Flash allows you to export your movie as a Windows AVI
file, an animated GIF, a sequence of standalone GIF, JPEGs or bitmaps, an Adobe
Illustrator document, an AutoCAD document, and a Windows
Metafile.
Similarly, if all you want is a single still from the movie,
you can select the frame and use the File -> Export Image command to export
the selected frame as a GIF, JPEG, PNG or BMP image.
And finally, you can
also export your Flash movie to a standalone executable, which can be played
back on any PC. In order to do this, you need to use something called a
Projector, which provides a "wrapper" capable of playing back a Flash
movie.
To create a Flash projector, first export the movie as an SWF
file, and then open the exported file in the standalone player which ships with
Flash 5. Use the File -> Create Projector command to create a single
executable which contains a stripped-down Flash player and your movie clip. You
can then distribute this Projector to friends, clients and old
girlfriends.
And that's about it for this week. Next week, I'll be
wrapping this tutorial up with a explanation of how you can add sound to your
Flash movie, and use GIF, JPEG and other pixel-based images in your Flash
movies. See you then!
This article copyright Melonfire
2001. All rights reserved.
