Flash for TV

[Jim]

I am midway through designing a TV commercial designed in Flash 5 only I have come apon a problem with the timeline. When playing the movie on the machine it doesn't respect the actual time (300 frames 30fps = 10secs). To get the movie to play to 10 seconds I have had o cut the timeline to 165 frames (still at 30fps) Any ideas?? When playing the swf file at a lower resolution it is understandable quicker, however I am concerned that this will be a serious issue when transfering to Video.



[Edited by Jim on 04-17-2001 at 07:42 AM]

[Jesse]

If you have scripts in your movie they can slow the movie down. Liek if you have a loop which waits for 3 seconds (using Actionscript) you will find that this is not reflected in you frames, so if you movie was 2 seconds worth of frames it will nonetheless take 5 seconds to play.

if it's not a script issue then it may well just come down to CPU load if you're using lots of complex animation or sound... when you publish in formats other than SWF does it maintain the timeline correctly?

Cheers

Jesse

[jaredly]

I want to start making slide shows for weddings and events of that sort with flash. They would have music and photos with text over them. Nothing big. The problems is I have no idea how to set up a flash movie for TV. Is there any where I can find this info that you know of? Any tips or ideas will help me out a lot. Right now I am in the dark about the hole thing.

As far as I understand it right now. I need to make a move at 30 fps. What size should I make it #x#? What res. is a TV? How do I get it on to a tape? Should I make it into quick time when I am done.

[Mortimer Jazz]

Hi Jaredly. In reply to your question:

From what little I know, Macromedia's Director may be better than Flash for what you want. Have a look into that. I've never used it, but some people here do, so hopefully they'll chip in their 2 cents ... 2 euro ...whatever.

Motion picture film runs at 24fps, PAL runs as 25fps and NTSC runs at 29.97fps (originally 30fps, but due to colour modifications it dropped slightly) so for UK tv 25 frames a second (or perhaps 24, because it can be evenly divided) would be a safe bet.
Unless you have much animation or video going on it shouldn't really make much of a difference.

As for getting your final production to video, it may be a good idea to get yourself a pc graphics card that has a tv-out socket - something like the All-In-Wonder from Radeon.

A quick search on Google turned up this book, which apparently has a chapter on Flash for television
http://www.halfpricecomputerbooks.ca/contents/0735711771


Searching on film-production based forums such as those for "Premiere" and "Final Cut Pro" may give you more information on producing something for the television.

I don't pretend to have done anything like this myself, and only recall the above facts from a bit of investigating I did a while back, but it may give you a few ideas for where to find more information.

Hope this helps.
Mort

[jaredly]

You have given me a lot to look into thanks. I will let you know how it all turns out.

What size do you think I should make my stage?

I am also going to use photos in my movie. Do you have any idea what res. I should have them at? 72px 96px (what res. is a TV screen?)

[Mortimer Jazz]

Hmm, not sure about the answers to those questions.
Hopefully that kind of info will be covered in one of the books.
Let us know how you get on :)