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.

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:

1. Remove the <IMG> tag from the code.
2. 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.

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.

It’s here finally…we’ve updated the Toufee flash movie maker so that you can set hyperlinks to open in the same window as the flash movie. The default behaviour of hyperlinks however will still remain - they open in a new browser window. However, you now have the option to change this to open hyperlinks in the same window.

Let me explain this with a test flash movie of mine (I know you’re complaining, its the same old promobanner flash movie that you might have been used to by now:) ). So here is a simple flash movie with a hyperlink button on it (Learn More). As is the default behavior, Toufee will open this hyperlink in a new window.

We’ll be now adding a few lines of code to the HTML code that Toufee generates so that hyperlinks open in the same window. The original HTML code of this movie is this:

<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>

Wherever it says userID=56&projID=promobanner we’ll be appending an additional parameter called target=_self such that it reads userID=56&projID=promobanner&target=_self (you’ll have to change it at three places in the code). Also, you would add this <param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”/> just before the </object> tag. So the final code would be something like this (note I’ve highlighted the extra code)

<p style=”visibility:visible;”><object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”http://pro.toufee.com/cgi2/player.pl?userID=56&projID=promobanner&target=_self“height=”280″ width=”200″ style=”width:200px;height:280px”><param name=”movie” value=”http://pro.toufee.com/cgi2/player.pl?userID=56&projID=promobanner&target=_self” /><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&target=_self“/><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”/></object></p>

Here is the promobanner flash movie after the change

Hope this helps. I will keep you posted with more flash movie tips and flash movie creation tutorials shortly. Btw, happy Easter holidays to all!

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.

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!

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

1. Go to http://www.tinyurl.com
2. In the very first page (i.e. the Homepage), you’ll see a textbox that says Enter a long URL to make tiny:
3. Enter your URL into the textbox and click on Make TinyURL! button
4. You’ll see a new page open with your newly created TinyURL. Copy the new TInyURL
5. 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

Today, we will look at a handy tip that might probably be useful when creating presentation-type flash movies, i.e. for flash videos primarly used for business presentations. We will look at how to show a flash movie object, for example, a text or an image (your company logo perhaps) throughout the entire playing time of the flash movie. Why would you want it that way? Assume you create a flash video about your product and you want your “product logo” or a product tagline to show through the movie. This is also useful when doing a business presentation where you want to have the topic or the “title” to show across all the slides.

While there is no direct way to place a flash movie object on all frames (yes, you can place the same object on all the frames but this increases the movie size), but there is a workaround. For example, if your movie plays for 220 seconds, then set the timing of the text object to 220 seconds and voila, your text will show the entire 220 seconds and that way, we create the effect as though the object was present in all the frames.

Enough said, let’s look at an example. Assuming we have a text object in our movie which we want to show for 220 seconds (i.e. the movie playing time is also assumed to be 220 seconds), then here is what to do

1. Select the text, and from the Left Panel (click on the Star icon on the left of your screen if you do not see the Left Panel), select Advanced tab
2. Expand Timing (Experts Only) option.
3. In the Then Hide it field, select Custom… from the dropdown list box
4. Enter the number of seconds (playing time of your movie) in the Hide After: field (see screenshot below)
5. Click Save button on the top right to save the changes

That’s it. Your text should now show throughout your flash movie play. It’s just a matter of extending the timing of the object.

Hope this was useful. As always, please forward all your queries, suggestions and concerns to help@toufee.com.

Till next time, God bless!

Ganesh

We’ve just finished adding additional formats to which you can now export flash movies created with Toufee. The top priority were the MOV and FLV formats as we got a number of requests for the same. Some users also did wish to export their flash videos to WMV. Without dissapointing any of them, we’ve added support to all these formats and in addition, we added MP4 support as well!

Very quickly, here is how to convert your flash movies to MOV, FLV, WMV etc

1. Submit your flash movie for YouTube conversion (Publish -> Export to YouTube option), yes, you heard us right, its YouTube conversion. As a first step, your flash movie needs to be converted to the AVI format. The AVI file is then converted to one of the target formats (MOV, FLV, WMV) which you’ll see in the steps that follow
2. You’ll receive an email that your flash movie is ready to download. The email will look similar to this.  Watch the last few lines closely though as you will now see a link that allows you to download the movie in MOV format.

   

3. When you click on the MOV link in the email, a new page will open with the message that your request for MOV conversion has been acccepted.  You will receive an email with the link to download your MOV file when it is ready. If MOV conversion is all that you need, then that is it. However, there is one more step you need to do if you are converting to FLV, MOV or MP4 formats

   
   
   

4. To convert to FLV, WMV and MP4 formats, you simply take the MOV link (shown in previous step) from the email and append the following parameter to the MOV link
   “&filetype=flv” (without quotes)
   So for example, if your MOV link is
   http://toufee.com/commoncgi/addmovrequest.pl?userID=56&proj=promobanner&domain=toufee.com
   then your FLV movie link would be just that with the “&filetype=flv” appended at the end of the URL.
   http://toufee.com/commoncgi/addmovrequest.pl?userID=56&proj=promobanner&domain=toufee.com&filetype=flv
   Once you paste the above URL in a browser window, you’ll get a similar confirmation page (as in step 3), this time however your movie will be queued for FLV conversion. The same applies to WMV and MP4, i.e. you simply need to change the value in the filetype parameter to wmv or mp4.

Hope this helps. Should you have any questions, please leave a Support Ticket by going to http://www.toufee.com/support/ and click on Submit a Support Ticket hyperlink.

See you all. Till next time.
Ganesh

Toufee, the popular online flash movie maker, now, more than ever, might be your best strategy for effective internet marketing. According to a recent report from ComScore 25% of all Google search queries  in the U.S. are for “YouTube”. In simple terms, every 1 out of 4 users using Google in the U.S. happen to search for YouTube and many eventually end up viewing a YouTube video. So how does this benefit Toufee users and internet marketers who use Toufee flash movies? For an internet marketer, this is great news, since YouTube presents a high-quality, targeted marketing platform that comes for free and has virtually no hassles setting up. All one needs is a good flash movie or a video presentation to deliver their marketing message and post this on YouTube. With Toufee flash movie maker, creating flash movies and flash videos is just a walk in the park. Toufee flash movie maker brings the power of Internet to your desktop as there are no software to install nor do you have to spend on costly hardware. All that you need is online connectivity and you can jumpstart in making your flash movies right from the word go.

YouTube publishing - the new marketing mantra

As you read earlier, going by the statistics, YouTube is sure an excellent marketing vehicle and publishing flash movies to YouTube is all the more easy with Toufee. In YouTube you have a wealth of traffic ready at your hands, all you need is a good flash video or a flash presentation to complete your marketing message - Toufee is your best bet for making flash movies.

One of the most sought after feature of Toufee is its support for YouTube publishing, something that many flash movie maker applications miss out on. Toufee makes publishing flash videos to YouTube as simple as it could get - all you need to do is select Publish to YouTube option in Toufee and in a matter of minutes Toufee emails you the link to download the AVI version of your flash movie which you then upload to YouTube to kickstart your marketing. We have many users who already use Toufee for creating marketing campaigns and promos and publish them  on YouTube channels.

Publishing Toufee flash movies to YouTube not only generates a lot of good traffic from YouTube, but also gets you a equally good traffic from Google as well! Since YouTube videos are always indexed by Google and returned on the first few search results, if you have a marketing video that is popular in YouTube, chances are that the same YouTube flash video might be indexed and returned when users search for related keywords in Google. This is the double-effect that you get when you combine the power of Toufee flash movies with a website like YouTube, that is the second-home to Internet users after Google.

Work anywhere, anytime, hassle-free

Toufee being an online flash application not only reduces the initial hassles of setting up a flash moviemaker application but provides all the tools that you need to create a professionally-looking flash movies. Toufee offers one-stop solution for all your requirements - you don’t have to waste your time scouting the Internet for images, audio or video; Toufee has an ever-growing database of images, audio and video that are constantly updated and tagged. That is not all, since Toufee supports direct import of media files from Flickr, Stock Photos for images and popular video engines like YouTube, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos and Metacafe for videos - all this from within the Toufee flash moviemaker application. With Toufee, there is a never a lost moment.

Publish at a single click!

As easy as it is to create flash movies with Toufee, so it is to publish flash movies. Toufee offers one-click publishing to popular social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut and to blogs like Blogger, TypePad etc. Here is a complete article that discusses more on Toufee’s one-click publishing feature. If you are planning to host the flash videos in your own websites, then you can easily export your flash movies to SWF or simply copy the HTML code from Toufee and add this to your website. With Toufee, making flash videos is just as easy.

With Toufee and YouTube, your internet marketing is as simple as uploading the AVI version of your Toufee flash movie to YouTube. And as you read earlier, if your flash video or your marketing presentation is good enough, YouTube will take care of the rest.