Flash File size issues (animation)

[crazydrummer253]

I am creating a flash series and I'm doing all of my characters and backgrounds in photoshop. I love the way it looks but when I import the characters and backgrounds into flash the file size is WAY too big. Is there something that I don't know about to lower the file size without losing any quality of the drawings? I've tried exporting the images for web devices and that greatly lowers the quality, and I've tried saving the images in different file types and they're all way too big. One background with a car driving down the road on it is over 1 mb. Help??

[ExpertAnimators]

Hey Crazy,
No you're not missing anything. If you put lots of high res images into a flash file the result is a large file.
There's always a compromize between quality and file size. You can experiment with different levels of JPG compression, using GIFs, making sure your images are scaled as small as you'll use them in the flash file, you can go below 72dpi (but again it sacrifices quality).
Depending on what you're making you could trace bitmap in flash for some of your images.
In some of my animations I choose to use a really low quality image for the background as it often moves etc, and doesn't matter that much. Then use a higher quality in the foreground.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
EA.