Recipe 5.10. Rendering Swift 3D Animations as Flash Video

Problem

You want to convert your animation from Swift 3D straight to video for Flash (FLV) and play it with Flash.

Solution

Use the export editor to render an .flv file and then use the new FLV player in Flash to place it on your page (or use the Flash Video Player plug-in in Dreamweaver 8).

Discussion

Swift 3D 4.5 introduced the ability to export animations, both vector and raster rendered, to the FLV (Flash Video) format. This alternative provides an excellent method for displaying movies that may be too complex to run on all computers due to processor demands. It also allows use of streaming to deliver files of large size without the issues associated with preloading an .swf file.

As stated, the FLV format is available when exporting from a raster or vector render. Although it is a simple process in each case, the settings available do differ. Before getting into the specific rendering options, it should be made clear that when exporting a vector-rendered FLV, the end results will not be vector data. It will be an FLV like any other. The difference is that this affords the possibility of maintaining the look of vector rendering, which is ideal for cartoon-like animations.

Whether rendering to vector or raster, the core FLV options stay the same. These include Encoding Focus (Quality and Bandwidth) and Keyframe Interval.

Quality

This option lets you specify whether you want the FLV compression to be focused on quality or bandwidth settings. Using the Quality setting causes the image quality to remain constant across all frames, running at a fixed bandwidth. A Quality setting at the maximum equals a bandwidth setting of 750kbs.

Bandwidth

If Bandwidth is given priority, the quality of the image will vary in order to adhere to the specified bandwidth value. This value represents kilobits per second and has a maximum setting of 750kbs.

Keyframe Interval

FLV encoding maintains its smaller file size through the use of keyframes and delta frames. Starting with the first frame of a video and at each keyframe thereafter, the entire frame of the video will be rendered. Between these keyframes,only the areas of the video that have experienced change will be rendered. These are known as delta frames. Due to this process, the overall image quality can degrade if keyframes are set too far apart; however it is a matter of give and take, as a greater number of keyframes will increase file size.

There are no special considerations to be had when working with a Swift 3Dcreated FLV in Flash. It can be imported or streamed just as any other. The only real shortcoming at this time is the lack of support for alpha transparency when exporting to the FLV format.

See Also

Chapter 18.