Flash animations

[keithubs1]

Dear all,

I have just joined a company where we have just started using articulate and we have had a couple of problems...
First, I have produced a bespoke flash animation which is basically a slideshow where several images fade in one after the other and then on the end frame it goes back to the first frame where it is continuously looping. Obviously as a standalone SWF it works as it is supposed to BUT when we import it into powerpoint and then preview in articulate it just plays once and stops. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Also we have tried placing ordinary text above an imported flash SWF movie but when you preview the text does not show above the flash movie itself. Am I right in assuming that this cannot be done?

I would really appreciate any comments. Many thanks.

Keith

[Justin]

I would suggest you insert the flash movie to play independent of the slide and have the slide advance by user. A Flash movie will always display on top of the slidex.swf file so text on the slidex.swf file would not be visible.

The only way I think you could work around that, and this is not something Articulate would support at all would be to make your Flash movie the "slide master" swf for the slide you are using. So what you would need to do would be this:

1. Create a unique slide master for that specific slide where you want the Flash movie.
2. Preserve the slide master.
3. Publish the presentation.
4. In the data\swf folder you should have a bgdxxx.swf file. This is the swf used for the slide master.
5. What you would need to do is create your Flash movie at 720 x 540 to match the dimensions of the slide master.
6. Rename it to match the bgdxxx.swf file and swap it out.
7. Theoretically, now the text you have animated on the slide will display on top of the inserted SWF.

I've never done that but I don't see why it couldn't work.

[daveperso]

Yes it does work. I wrote an article about this some time back for Presenter 5. As Justin says, for Presenter '09 the dimensions are now 720 x 540 and not as mentioned in the article. The rest is pretty much the same.

Regards

[cheryld]

Hi

I am a new user and wish to start importing some bespoke Flash animations to give slides a 'wow' factor - I don't intend them to take up the whole slide...

Am I assuming correctly from this thread that if I import any Flash element, regardless of size or type, that it take over the whole PPT slide and I cannot add any explanatory text??
If so I'd rather know now before I spend any money!

Thanks
Cheryl

[daveperso]

Hi Cheryl, Absolutely not.

This thread was discussing a "technical" way of adding a second Flash file to the presentation which is actually not supported, a kind of background Flash file for your main Flash file.

No, you can add a SWF or FLV video of any size to your slide and add text, images to accompany the Flash file. If you import an FLV video, you can actually change the dimensions of the video on the slide. If you import a SWF video, then the size of the SWF will be the same size as on the slide.

This tutorial shows you what I mean.

Regards,