What the heck is this????

[bobmi357]

Just finished building a swish file. It currently contains 7 total scenes, with no scene exceeding 160 frames. When I exported it to html, the file was HUGE, nearly 2mb. When I performed a report on the file, the report said it used 136K placetags, consuming 1.7 mb. What the heck are these place tags and had can I optimize this?

- Bob
[email protected]

[Pla$tik]

Place tags arethings you use to place an object, sprite, or button etc. into the move or into a sprite. Those can take up a lot, esp. when you said you use 136 of them. Also, 7 scenes without any of them split into seperate movies with a load movie function is ALSO gonig to consume a lot.

[Cadence]

Actually, the Place Tags are a bit different ...

When you use something like the "Explode" effect ... It has to "Place" each character in a different location for each frame of the effect ... If you try to explode a large block of text -- that equates to a LOT of place tags ...

The same thing goes for the Snake Effect ...

If you have a lot of effects in your movie -- you will definately have a lot of Place tags - therefore, the file size will go up considerably ...

It's better to use less of those effects -- shorten the length of each effect -- and stick to simple effects (Fade In/Out, Place, Remove, etc.)

ps. I've used 1 single Snake effect in the past that made the file size over 600kb ... just to give you an idea of just HOW BIG effects can get.

Peaces,
Cadence

[bobmi357]

Originally posted by Cadence
Actually, the Place Tags are a bit different ...

When you use something like the "Explode" effect ... It has to "Place" each character in a different location for each frame of the effect ... If you try to explode a large block of text -- that equates to a LOT of place tags ...

The same thing goes for the Snake Effect ...

If you have a lot of effects in your movie -- you will definately have a lot of Place tags - therefore, the file size will go up considerably ...

It's better to use less of those effects -- shorten the length of each effect -- and stick to simple effects (Fade In/Out, Place, Remove, etc.)

ps. I've used 1 single Snake effect in the past that made the file size over 600kb ... just to give you an idea of just HOW BIG effects can get.

Peaces,
Cadence

This was exactly what I needed. I cut the effect to a minimum and managed to reduce the file from 1.9mb to 203Kb. THANKS!

- Bob

[roger_onslow]

Note that not all place tags in your SWF file are the same. SWF format is quite clever, and it only needs to have enough just information about the placement. So if all that is happening is that the object/letter/etc is moving, the place tag will just contain the new movement only.

But if it is moving, graudally rotating, changing scale and fading (say) (like it would in an explode effect) then each place tag will have much more information in it.

Basically, if you have a 5 letter word and a 10 frame complex effect, that should mean 5 place tags per frame = 50 place tags.

Sometimes there is more going on than you thinkg .. for example, in the typewriter effect, even though each letter gets placed once, the cursor has to move and flash as well (that's what eats up the frames in the typewriter effect).

In some situations, SWiSH v2 (and earlier) will generate more place tags that it really needs to .. in particular if you mix complex and simple effects on the one object.

For example, if you have some text with a fade in followed by an explode, SWISH will fade in each letter separately (instead of fading the word as a whole) so you get more placed tags that you really need. You can see that by looking at the File|Test|Report.

The next major update of SWISH addresses this problem.