Re: FLASH: Streaming externally loaded movies. Results

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 04:13 PM 2/6/00 , you wrote:



>just did a quick test (emphasis on quick, I may have done something wrong,

>I'm tired).

>

>uploaded the two .swf files, watched the intro (noticed the browser finish

>the swf download whilst I was watching it)

>

>so the whole intro was loaded, and I was half waythrough watching it.

>

>remember, the last frame contains a load movie action.

>

>when it got to the end of the movie, I had to wait 20 seconds while the

>Menu.swf file had loaded enough to show the first frame.



this makes me wonder how big your menu.swf is. Even on a 28k modem, 20 

seconds is at least 40k of content. Or perhaps the server connection is 

quite slow. Either way, I really recommend you make the menu portion 

smaller and consider making it part of the main movie. Then you can reuse 

symbols and perhaps that will save some file size (f it's an external .swf, 

you can't share symbols with your first movie's library).




>proving that flash's streaming isn't as intelligent as I had hoped.



A single movie streaming is pretty intelligent: loads from start to finish, 

as fast as it can. Multiple movies streaming is not very intelligent: you 

cannot control how each loads if they're competing for bandwidth. There's 

no rule of priority in that case, so the sharing of the bandwidth is random 

as far as I know.




>looks like I will have to combine the nav system at the end of the intro

>movie, in a new scene maybe



Do try to avoid scenes. You will regret them later. Find other ways to 

organize your timeline, including using movie clips to shorten the 

timeline, lots of layers to keep work organized, and frame comments to help 

you locate key places.


>(I'll do an acript script to display the skip button only if it detects the

>menu has already loaded maybe)



Marc Hoffman


Poison Dart Frog Media: Specializing in Flash Animation and Digital Audio 

Production

Our latest Flash job is on display at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/rickfrnd>

See our Flash portfolio at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)



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