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Thread: Pre-Loading .flv animations?

  1. #1
    Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
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    Pre-Loading .flv animations?

    Hi friends,
    I'm having trouble understanding if it is possible to pre-load .flv animations. I have created a flash presentation such that the user advances through the animations using buttons. That being the case, I have one main .swf file that references multiple .flv animations.

    My client doesn't like the fact that the user can start the animation before all the movies are loaded, because on a slow connection there is too long of a buffer.

    So, I want to go ahead and preload all the .flvs before even beginning. While that will mean that the user has to wait a bit longer, at least there will not be the annoying pauses throughout the presentation.

    However, I cannot figure out how to get Koolmoves to understand that I want it to preload those .flvs.

    My first attempt is here:
    http://www.brianheagney.com/Q-Matic/...lth_KM_055.swf

    In this first attempt, I have a "begin" button with the "Load Movie" action script associated with it, so essentially, the user pushes the "begin" button and the button loads all the movies, but also advances to the next frame.

    This kind of works. Sometimes it starts to play the first .flv before it's finished loading all the other ones, which means the user will "catch up" to the loading spot, and there will be that undesirable buffering stop/start stuff going on.

    My second attempt is here:
    http://www.brianheagney.com/Q-Matic/...lth_KM_059.swf

    In this second one, I instead place "Load Movie" actionscript within first and second frames themselves, hoping that the Koolmoves Pre-loader would have taken all the .flvs into account.

    Unfortunately, it doesn't. Which makes me wonder, what good is the pre-loader if it doesn't take into account the movies that are loaded into even the first frame? Am I not understanding what the pre-loader is supposed to do?

    This second case is fairly similar to the first, except that because I enlarged the .flvs in the first and second frame, you can see them loading behind the intro image, but that's not really what I'm worried about...I just want to make it so that the user knows that the flash presentation is loading all of the animations.

    Is this possible at all?

    Does this have to do with the fact that there are so many .flvs? I know that they are fairly large, but if I reduce them any further, the quality will be very poor.

    Also, my client asked if the loading issue had anything to do with the fact that I am referencing multiple .flvs instead of having it all as one .swf. And I have no idea what to tell him. Is it possible to turn what I have into one sole .swf? Without referencing all the .flvs? Perhaps that is why the pre-loader doesn't take into account the .flvs.

    Any help regarding any of these questions would obviously be greatly appreciated.

    -Brian H.

    Also, here is a .zip folder with all of the data:
    http://www.brianheagney.com/Q-Matic/...flvpreload.zip

  2. #2
    Senior Member
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    A preloader is for the main swf itself. If you have a main swf that is very large, it shows the preloader until the loading of the main movie is finished.
    flv movies are supposed to stream. It's not a file format that you preload.

  3. #3
    Super Moderator
    Join Date
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    Another approach (if my memory is correct) you might investigate is to convert the flv to a mp4 and move the mp4 header from the back of the file to the front using special software. But if a user has a slow connection, no solution will work well.

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