Thanks Pixelboy but no luck. As I mentioned, I've tried saving it as a flash 4 and 5 (which don't have the compress movie option) and have also opened and saved the swf in flash mx and flash 5.

Wondering if it's a font problem, although I used univers which is pretty common.

maybe a graphics card problem (i have a g4 with the ati pro128) AGP slot model.

any other ideas?

sorry for the late response. been out of town for a week.