Koolmoves Out of Memory

[brianheagney]

I began this odyssey by creating a presentation where a person moves through a building using a series of buttons. There are multiple ways that a person could choose to go, so I couldn't have it all one animation, I had to have separate animations, and play them at the proper time.

My first solution was to use .flvs, however, my client's servers were slow, and they didn't like the fact that there were multiple .flvs NOT being loaded in the beginning.

So, this latest time, I decided that instead of one main .swf with multiple .flv references, I would actually embed everything into one .swf.

So, there are about 13 different animations that need to be loaded. That means I have roughly 13 frames in my main movie. Each frame, has a movie on it, that is made up of a few seconds of "video", essentially created out of a series of .jpgs.

So, the first frame of the main movie plays a sub-movie (made out of multiple jpgs).

I have loaded about 5 out of the 13 jpg series, and now Koolmoves is stopping me from loading any more images and is telling me Koolmoves is running out of memory.

Is there a way to increase the amount of memory in the settings somewhere? Is that based on my computer? I've been able to shut down Koolmoves, restart Koolmoves and add about 10 more jpgs, but I've got hundreds to go.

Right now, the .swf that I'm creating from this method is about 17 MB, and it will probably be about double that in the end. Unfortunately, I see no way around it at this time (until I completely redo the method here and go for real-time simulation, but I've missed the boat on that one).

So, am I screwed with this whole running out of memory thing? Or is there a way to increase it (in 3ds Max, there's a setting you can click on to increase the amount of available memory to 3ds max, is there something like that for Koolmoves?)


Alright, so I'm moving forward with creating a presentation so that it is all one .swf.

[Bob Hartzell]

You are going in the wrong direction. You don't want a 17 or 34 Mb swf. Many versions of Flash ago, Macromedia said that 5Mb was the limit for a swf. I don't even understand the logic of this direction. If you intend to preload this, it will take foreever on slow connections and be annoying even with fast connections. It is better to have each thing load as it is needed. Maybe someone can come up with a scheme (action script code) how to preload each individual item while viewing the previous.

[brianheagney]

Yeah, I know I don't want a very large .swf;
But my client doesn't want their clients to have the presentation interrupted in the middle to load each animation.

So I think what you're saying is that I could have the first three or four animations pre-loaded, and have the first button load the next few animations, and the second button load the final animations.

That might work.

[w.brants]

Preloading flv files or embedding that much images is not a great choice.
Maybe you can decrease the resolution of the flv files so they require less bandwidth.

[brianheagney]

The problem with decreasing the resolution of the .flvs is that the client wants a fairly medium resolution, non-pixelated animation.

If I decrease the size of the flvs any more, then they will be too pixelated.

I'm trying to find the right balance between resolution and size, but really, I'm leaning towards a 20 MB single .swf if I can.

I don't understand why that is not desirable. For high-bandwidth users, the wait isn't noticeable, and for low-bandwidth users, while it may be slightly annoying to wait, it isn't as annoying as experiencing a choppy animation that buffers constantly.

What do other producers of content like this do?

Here's a link to one of my examples, where I load all of my .flvs on the first button click, and I created my own "loading" animation. If you want to go through the animation, just know that there are two buttons "hospital" and "pharmacy" on the kiosk, they don't look like buttons, but they are.

http://www.brianheagney.com/Q-Matic/QM-HC-Final/Health_KM_055.swf

[w.brants]

That server should be fast enough to stream flv movies.
If a connection is not fast enough, downloading 20 MB will take a long time and most of the viewers will be gone before it even has finished loading. Viewers usually only wait for a few seconds unless they really want to see the content.
Looking at your swf and the kind of movies you have, you could have considered using a 3d engine to build your world. Remus has a lot of experience with those things.

[brianheagney]

Ah yes, I realized that Unity 3D should have been the way to go...
When I started this project, the scope was smaller, and the client directly asked for a "flash animation".

Since the project grew in scope to over twice the original concept, yeah, I realized that a 3D engine is the best solution for this. The problem is time now, I'd have to optimize the model for exporting into the engine, then create all the buttons in Unity, which is theoretically easy, but since I've been doing this whole thing in Flash so far for the client, I'm sure there would be unforseen issues that would arise.

One thing I'm finding is that the client kept saying that the animations would freeze up and stall, even after they were loaded. The original animations were .flvs, and after I switched them out, so that the main .swf referenced other .swfs (instead of referencing other .flvs), they said the animations had stopped freezing up, and that they were good.

So, I guess they had issues viewing the .flvs instead of .swfs? Anyway, I'm almost finished finding the solution this this problem...I think.

[brianheagney]

Anyway, I'm almost finished finding the solution this this problem...I think...

I meant to add "thanks to everyone's help on this forum!!!!"