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September 27th, 2009
In this article, I’ll quickly walk through the steps involved in downloading your Toufee flash movie as a standalone SWF flash file. Though the process is straightforward, let me show you the various ways you could download the flash movie as a SWF file. Let’s begin right away.
SWF download process
- To export your flash movie, select Publish -> Export to Flash (Standalone SWF) option from the main Toufee menu
- The Downloading SWF file dialog box should open.
 This will be followed by an Open dialog box that should prompt you the location to save the SWF file. Browse the directory in your computer and click Save. That should complete the download process. However, if the Open dialog box does not appear then proceed to step 3.
- If for any reason you do not get the Open dialog box, click Save As button found in the Downloading SWF file dialog window (shown above). This will initiate the download of the SWF file as a zip file.
- You would now need to uncompress or unzip the zipped file. For this, you would require a free utility such as WinZip, WinRAR etc. If you have Windows XP or Vista, then there is a built-in feature that will extract zip files simply by right-clicking on it
- Upon successfully extracting the zip file, you should see the SWF file in the same folder (if you extracted by selecting Extract Here option) or in the target folder that you extracted the flash movie SWF file.
Manual download of Toufee Flash Movie SWF file
If clicking the Save As in step 3 did not intiate download of the zipped file, then you could follow the manual approach to saving the SWF file of your flash movie. Here is how:
- In the Downloading SWF File dialog window, click on Copy URL!. This will copy the URL of the SWF file in memory.
- Open Firefox, and enter the URL in the browser address bar and press Enter key. This will then open the SWF file of the flash movie in the browser window. Select Save Page As option to save the SWF file.
If using Internet Explorer, then you would have to do the following. After pasting the URL in Internet Explorer’s address bar, select Tools -> Internet Options
Under Temporary Internet files section, click on Settings button
In the Settings dialog box, click on View Files button
The Temporary Internet Files folder on your local computer should open. Search for the SWF file, right-click it and select Copy
Paste the SWF file into any folder and you now have the SWF file of your Toufee flash movie ready. You can publish the SWF file to your webpage. For the HTML code to use embed the flash movie SWF file in your webpage refer the following KB article:
http://www.toufee.com/support/index.php?page=kb_view&id=69
Hope this was useful. See you all again in my next post.
Posted in Flash Tips, Toufee Pro, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
August 16th, 2009
I recently came across an issue where Toufee users who use Microsoft Outlook did not find the “Save Target As” option when they right-click the AVI video download link in the email that they receive after their flash movie is converted to video. The reason being that the “Save Target As” option is only available if you access your email via a web client (typically via your browser). The workaround however is this:
- Save the following code as a HTML file. Open Notepad, paste the code and select File -> Save As option and enter “AVI_download_script.html” (with quotes)
<!- AVI Download workaround ->
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE> AVI Download Script </TITLE>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="javascript">
<!--
function createPage(aviURL)
{
document.write("<html><head>");
document.write("<BR>Click the link to download the AVI file or right-click link and select 'Save Target As' or 'Save Link As' option <P>");
document.write("<A HREF='"+aviURL+"'>Download AVI file</A>");
}
//-->
</SCRIPT></HEAD>
<BODY>
Enter AVI URL: <INPUT TYPE="TEXT" ID="URL">
<button OnClick="createPage(document.getElementById('URL').value)">Download</button>
</BODY></HTML>
- Enter the download link from the email into the textbox and click Download button
- You should see a new page generated with the link Download AVI file. Right-click this link and select Save Target As option (if using Internet Explorer) or Save Link As option (Firefox) and you should be able to download your flash video.
Hope the workaround was useful. Meet you in my next post!
Posted in Flash Tips | No Comments »
July 19th, 2009
We’re sometimes hit with questions from our users (many of them flash designers and advanced flash users themselves) that lead us to think how customers are using Toufee Flash Movie Maker to create complex flash movies that we never though of. This post is the result of a recent query from a customer who designs flash websites with Toufee. This customer had a specific requirement where he wanted to delay the start of background music that is added to the flash movie. Though there is no option that does this straightaway, Toufee Flash Movie Maker with its hundreds of features certainly provides workarounds that can come in handy.
The solution
I really didn’t know how to delay the start of the background music until one of my senior colleague told me the trick. The idea is to add the background music to an invisible text object instead of the entire flash movie. Once the background music is added to the text object, set it to show after x seconds (i.e. how many seconds you want to delay the background music) and set its timing so that it is “live” throughout the playing time of the whole flash movie.
Step-by-Step
So here is how you go about doing it:
- Place an “empty” text object in the first frame of the flash movie. If you’re not able to leave it empty, then use input the period symbol (.) as the text and set the Font Size to 1 so it is visible the least.
- Set the color of the text to match the background of the flash movie frame so it creates a near invisible effect.
- Set the text object such that it loads along with the second frame but is played the entire length of the movie. To do this, click on the text object, switch to the Advanced tab on the Left Panel, expand Timing (Experts Only) option and make sure the settings look like below:Show It: 5 secs (the delay time before the background music starts to play)
After: Frame1 shows
Then Hide It: Custom…
Hide After: Total Playing Time – Timing of First Frame (Assuming a total playing time of 32 seconds, and the timing of the first frame is 2 seconds, then you would enter 30 seconds)
- Add the background music to the text object, i.e. Hold the SHIFT key, drag and drop the audio file over the text object. This adds the music to the object so that the music plays as long as the object is shown on screen.
Hope this is useful. Again, it is you, our customer, that really keep Toufee Flash Movie Maker kicking. It’s your queries on creating flash movies and about the various flash movie features in Toufee that makes us push up the bar everytime. And we only hope it keeps rising.
Posted in Flash Tips | No Comments »
May 7th, 2009
If you had used the Paused at Start option for your Toufee flash movies, and if you had tried to download this flash movie as SWF file to your PC and play it back, you’ll notice that the “Paused at Start” option does not work anymore – the SWF file of your flash movie would just start to play. Why is it so? This is by design. The reason being when you download a flash movie as SWF, then most often then not you would want to have the SWF play automatically. That makes perfect sense. But there are instances where you might want the “Paused at Start” option to stay with your SWF flash movies as well. Here is how you do it:
1) We’ll first create a copy of the original flash movie. We’ll be working with this newly created copy (and not the original project…nope!). Follow the below KB article to create a copy of a Toufee flash movie project:
http://www.toufee.com/support/index.php?page=kb_view&id=87
If you would like to rename the newly created movie project, then refer the following link:
http://www.toufee.com/support/index.php?page=kb_view&id=88
2) Alright, looks we’re ready to roll. Open the newly created flash movie project in Toufee. Before doing anything else, turn off Random Effects. Refer the following article for instructions:
http://www.toufee.com/support/index.php?page=kb_view&id=68
Toufee usually adds random flash effects to new flash movie objects. As we’ll be adding a flash button that will act as the Play button that will start the movie play, we do not want any kind of effect added to it by default.
3) Create a new frame by selecting Frames -> Add New Frame option. A blank frame would be added but we’ll need to move this frame to the beginning so that it is the first frame of the flash movie. To do this, select Frames -> Change Frame Order. Select the Frame that was newly added. Usually frames are numbered from Frame1 to FrameN, so most of the time, the newly created frame usually has the highest frame number. Select the appropriate frame and click Move Up. Do this until the new frame moves to the top of the list
4) Now here is an important step. What we’re now gonna do is mimic the original first frame of the flash movie. If you are using a common background for your flash movie, then the blank frame that you’ve just added will also take that background and no more action is required so you can directly jump to the next step. However, in scenarios where you are using flash movies where every individual frame is distinct (e.g. flash movie photo slides), then you need to create an exact replica of your second frame (the original first frame). To do this, select the second frame in your flash movie and select Publish -> Export Frame as JPG option. This will create a JPEG image of your frame which you can then upload to your Toufee account and add to the first frame thereby creating an exact replica.
5) Alright, what next. Two important things remain. We need to set the timing of the first frame to 1 second (yes no more than a second). To do this select the first frame, switch to the Advanced tab on the Left Panel, expand Timing (Experts Only) option. In the Frame Length field, enter 1 as the value. Also, make sure you enable the On Frame End Pause Movie option. This option is your workaround so don’t forget to enable it. Enabling this will cause your flash movie to Pause as soon as soon as the frame loads since we set the timing of the first frame to 1 second thereby creating a “Paused at Start” option effect.
6) Are we done? Nope, not yet. We paused the movie alright but show we not add the option to resume the movie. Well you could argue that you can use the Play control (just beneath your flash movie) to resume playback but generally, people do not prefer the flash movie player controls on the SWF so you wouldn’t find the Play button 9 out of 10 times. How do resume the playback then? Add a flash button and create a link to the second frame. Click on the Buttons option on the right panel, choose a flash button (I would prefer to choose one under the Glass category. We’ve found the “Glass” buttons go down nicely with most flash movies), and add it to the first frame. Double-click the button to change the text (to say “Play” or “Start” or whatever you feel like). While the button is still selected, switch to the Advanced tab on the Left Panel, expand Link To – Website / Email option. In the Link To dropdown list, select Frame as the value. in the Frame # field dropdown list, select the corresponding frame number of the second frame.
That is it. You can now download your flash movie as an SWF file and you would notice your SWF flash movie will pause when loaded. The flash movie automatically resumes when you click on the button in the first frame. Hope this was helpful. See you all in my next post.
Posted in Flash Tips, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
May 2nd, 2009
Not many customers might know that Toufee support publishing of its flash movies on websites that use SSL. When you try to publish a Toufee movie HTML code, you might encounter the following warning message:
Though clicking Yes would still allow the browser to stream the flash movie over HTTP from our servers, if security is paramount and you don’t wish to compromise, then worry not as you’ll see below you can turn your Toufee flash movie to be securely streamed by simply changing a few lines in the flash movie HTML code that you get from the Publish window. However please note that this feature is only available to Business customers.
Let’s look at an example of a normal flash movie code below:
<img style=”visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;” border=0 width=0 height=0 src=”http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEyNDEyNDYxNzk5NjgmcHQ9MTI*MTI*NjE4MzI4MSZwPTEyMzcxJmQ9Jmc9MiZ*PSZvPTU3NjNkYjFiYjAzMDQ4MmJhY2VmOTdjMThhMGY5ODI3Jm9mPTA=.gif” />
<p style=”visibility:visible;”>
<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”http://pro.toufee.com/cgi2/player.pl?userID=56&projID=promobanner” height=”280″ width=”200″ style=”width:200px;height:280px”>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://pro.toufee.com/cgi2/player.pl?userID=56&projID=promobanner” />
<param name=”quality” value=”high” />
<param name=”scale” value=”noscale” />
<param name=”salign” value=”lt” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”/>
<param name=”flashvars” value=”userID=56&projID=promobanner”/>
</object>
</p>
We’ll be doing a couple of changes to convert the above code so that it supports SSL hosting. Here is how:
- Remove the <IMG> tag from the code.
- Replace all occurrences of HTTP with HTTPS
Replace the line http://pro. with https://www. Please note that you will have to do this at two places in the code
So the new code would be:
<p style=”visibility:visible;”>
<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”https://www.toufee.com/cgi2/player.pl?userID=56&projID=promobanner” height=”280″ width=”200″ style=”width:200px;height:280px”>
<param name=”movie” value=”https://www.toufee.com/cgi2/player.pl?userID=56&projID=promobanner” />
<param name=”quality” value=”high” />
<param name=”scale” value=”noscale” />
<param name=”salign” value=”lt” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”/>
<param name=”flashvars” value=”userID=56&projID=promobanner”/>
</object>
</p>
If you are planning to host the Toufee flash movie SWF file on your own SSL website, then you don’t have to follow this process. The above steps are required only if you use the HTML code generated from Toufee in which case the flash movie that is streamed by default over HTTP from Toufee’s servers.
Posted in Flash Tips, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
April 30th, 2009
Toufee has parterned with Eltima Software, a global information technology company, specializing in virtual serial communications and multimedia software development for the Windows and the Mac platforms. Under the new partnership, all customers who purchase a Toufee subscription (effective immediately) will get 50% discount on Eltima SWF & FLV Player for the Mac OS. Eltima SWF & FLV Player is an advanced Flash Player for the Mac OS that delivers superior functionalities such as the ability to save Flash movies to harddrive (even if the flash movie is played on a web page), play flash movies in Full Screen mode, capture screenshot of a flash movie frame and convert the FLV or a SWF movie into a series of screenshots. Besides these advanced features, other cool features of Eltima SWF & FLV Player are the option to zoom in/out flash movies, fast-forward, rewind playback, etc.
All new customers who purchase Toufee can now avail the special 50% discount on Eltima SWF & FLV Player which currently retails for $19.95. This is an exclusive offer that Eltima has made available only to Toufee customers to mark the significant parternship with Toufee. Toufee’s partnership with Eltima gives Mac users the best online flash movie maker application to quickly and easily develop portable flash solutions combined with Eltima SWF & FLV Player that provides a convenient, feature-rich platform for playback of SWF and FLV files on the Mac platform.
For any queries about the offer, please raise a Support Ticket by going to the Support Desk (http://www.toufee.com/support) and clicking on Submit a Support Ticket link.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 25th, 2009
One of the most powerful features of Toufee flash moviemaker application but relatively less used is the built-in text-to-speech option. With the help of Toufee’s text-to-speech engine you can add voice narrations to your flash movies without any additional burden of needing to have a “audio” file for the voiceover. Consider having to add speech to your flash videos manually by recording your own – this not only requires additional software/hardware to record the voice but also requires lots of effort to synchronize the timing of the flash movie with that of background audio. Toufee flash moviemaker saves you all the hassles so you can concentrate in creating your flash movie. To have your text read out, simply double click the text object in your flash movie to bring up the Text Editor as shown below:
Click on the dropdown list as shown in the screenshot. This is where you select the Text-to-Speech character for your text. Note that Toufee offers six different characters to choose from. Each character has a different pitch and a pause so preview the voices well when you create your flash movie. Please note that you can change the character any time from the Text Editor window.
Toufee’s Text-to-Speech feature can be a powerful asset for your flash movies. This feature is extremely useful when if you are planning to develop flash video tutorials, personal biographies, or flash movies that narrate a story or incident etc, as adding voice narrations would create a much better impact that can really enhance a flash movie.
Hope this is useful. If you have something to share, please do leave us a comment.
Posted in Toufee Pro, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
March 15th, 2009
Timing is an advanced feature of Toufee flash movies and an important feature which could deliver amazing results if used effectively. Just to give a background, timing is the lifeline of a Toufee flash movie, i.e. every flash movie object has a timing value that has start and end points associated with it. All flash objects (i.e. your text, images, etc.) in a Toufee flash movie are relative to each other and any inconsistent timing value might affect other objects in your flash movie leading to deviation from your desired result. Before we go into the nitty-gritty of Toufee movie timing and timelines I would recommend that you please take a moment to go through my earlier article Working with Frame Timing which introduces the basic concepts of frame timing and how to use them.
What’s in a timing?
Timing is everything in a Toufee flash movie – it determines the sequence and flow of your flash movie. To control the timing of an object, select the object and expand the Timing (Experts Only) option under the Advanced tab on the Left Panel.
The three important timing settings associated with an object are as follows:
Show It: The number of seconds after which the object should show
After: Show the object after this event, for example, after Frame1 shows
Then Hide It: Hide the object after this event, for example when Frame1 ends. The Hide It takes more values, i.e. you can also specify the number of seconds after which the object should be unloaded. To enter a custom value, one would have to select Custom from the from the Then Hide It dropdown list. Why would you want to select a custom value? Well, there might be instances where you would want to show the text (maybe a tagline) or your company logo throughout the flash movie. I have written a separate blog article on this which you might want to have a look at.
Timelines – that extra push!
Well, you had Timing options which are great when you want to adjust the timing of your flash movie. Isn’t that all one would need? To answer the question, yes, you should be fine with the Timing options in most of the cases, however, there are some instances when you might need more than what the Timing options has to offer. For example, you might in the future run into a situation where you change the Then Hide It value of an object (say an image) to unload along with the frame in which case you would use “when Frame2 ends” (assuming Frame2 is the current frame). You go then ahead and press the Save button but only to find that the changes are not saved? Why wouldn’t it save – the reason as I mentioned earlier is the relativity of the Toufee movie objects, i.e. the timing of every flash movie object is relative to one another. So if Toufee finds an inconsistency in timing, it will not save the changes and hence the problem. So how do you rectify this? Timeline is the answer!
Where is the Timeline?
When you select a Toufee object, you’ll immediately notice a timing slider just beneath the Toufee MovieMaker stage. This is the timeline.
When you select an object, you’ll notice two arrows (triange-shaped) marking the Start and the End timing of the object relative to the frame in which it is present.
For example, let’s say you have a text control named TControl71. Click on the text control and you’ll immediately notice the Timing bar (below the stage) and the Start and End arrows. Simply drag the End arrow to the end of the timing bar – this makes the object TControl71 to unload along with the frame). Please note that the timing bar of TControl71 is relative to the Frame and not to the Movie. If you want to delay showing (say by 2 seconds) of the TControl71, then you would simply move the Start arrow in the slider as in the image below.
When you run into instances where you could not set an object to unload witht the frame (i.e. when you cannot select When Frame ends option as the value for Then Hide It field), then simply use the Timeline and set the End arrow to the end of the timing bar.
Hope this helps. Until the next time, God bless!
Posted in Toufee Pro, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
February 18th, 2009
In this brief article, we’ll be looking at how to use HTTPS URLs in your Toufee flash movies. Though Toufee flash movies support HTTP and HTTPS URLs, some users run into issues when using hyperlinks in their flash videos. To overcome this problem, we’ll be using a free service called TinyURL, that takes an URL as an input (generally, a lengthy URL, for example, something like http://www.toufee.com/moviemaker/how-to-show-flash-movie-objects-through-a-flash-video/) and converts this into a tiny URL of the form say http://tinyurl.com/dkzsbz (just as the name suggests!).
Before I run you through how to get this working, for those who do not know how to add hyperlinks, I would suggest that you please refer the following KB article that shows how to add hyperlinks when you create a flash video.
http://www.toufee.com/support/index.php?page=kb_view&id=89
Assuming that you are now familiar with adding hyerlinks to your Toufee flash movies, here is how you shorten your URL using TinyURL
- Go to http://www.tinyurl.com
- In the very first page (i.e. the Homepage), you’ll see a textbox that says Enter a long URL to make tiny:
- Enter your URL into the textbox and click on Make TinyURL! button
- You’ll see a new page open with your newly created TinyURL. Copy the new TInyURL
- Switch over to Toufee, select the object for which you wish to add hyperlink, switch to the Advanced tab on the Left Panel, expand Link To – Website / Email option. In the Link To dropdown list, select Website and enter the newly created TinyURL in the URL textbox.
If you ever have problems with using hyperlinks in your flash movies, then try using TinyURL. This feature is also very useful when you want to add HTTPS or very long URLs.
Hope this helps. See you all in my next post!
Ganesh
Posted in Flash Tips, Toufee Pro, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
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