Multi channel display of flash movie?

[Robbiego]

Hi! I would like to know if it´s possible in Flash to use multi channel output. I want to produce a movie which has to be shown on 6 displays, every display shows another part of the movie, e.g. a running man runs from screen A to screen B etc. Therefore all flash movies have to be synchronized. Ideally I create a movie in a 2048x256 (flash doesnt allow more but it´s vector based anyway so that doesnt matter) and cut the video size in 6 pieces of 341x256. Alternatively I can maybe create 6 flash movies, play them in 6 browsers, each browser using one channel and have them synchronized. Also have been thinking about Director, but don´t have much experience with that software. Any ideas on this topic? I would really appreciate any input! Thanks! Rob Goris / Netherlands.

[Lightwave Network]

Can't do it, unfortunately. I wish we could deal with multiple displays and talk back and forth--I had a project last year that would have survived if this were possible.

The only workaround I can think of is if you can split a single display across 6 monitors. It would probably be a very wide, wide, wide screen effect for you...but I could see it working. I can't think of any other way you could go at this, though.

The idea of using multiple browser windows might work, though. You could "talk" between browsers if you had to. It would certainly be a headache--keep a bottle of Advil laying around.

[Lightwave Network]

Oh yeah, you could also build just one big friggin Flash movie and stretch it across the screens--don't use the fscommand("fullscreen") command though. You want your movie to begin on x:0,y:0 of your display...

[Robbiego]

Thanks for the reply. In the meantime I didn´t sit still and found the following solution:

- Import all FLash assets etc. into Director, which can deal with huge resolutions (I chose 5122x768)
- Play it like one movie
- Use one Matrox 4-channel videocard (450MMS) and one 2-channel videocard in a powerfull to split the wide movie 6 output channels (monitors / beamers).

I cant wait to try the setup, but theoretically (brochure talk) it must work!

[Lightwave Network]

Good idea! I'll have to try it--we've got a 4 channel display setup on one of the computer here--sounds like it should work!

[Pyromaster]

I am trying to put together a four display setup. I was wondering if i could get more details about how you achived this. I am using four single output video cards for the output. Did you user director to make it windowless?

[Robbiego]

We you use a multichannel videocard (I used Matrox 200MMS) Windows 2000/XP will enable u to use windows as big as you want. You can stretch them over many screens. Ofcourse for presentations you dont want to see the window bars so what I did is to export the Director movie (Director is by the way the only application I could find which can set up a workspace of e.g.5120x768 pixels) as a projector file, this is an .exe file which includes all assets and Shockwave player. Here you can choose to export without a window bar and center the whole thing so the film will be shown stretched over all your screens perfectly. Beware of the performance though. The individual videochips are powerpfull enough but the CPU has to address all of them. I used a Pentium IV 2Ghz with 765 MB but it turned out I had to adjust my design to speed up the film. Especially Flash assets together in Director with Quicktime or animated GIFS slow down the CPU. Also dont overuse transparancy tweens. Good luck!