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Archive for the ‘Flash Tips’ Category
Sunday, 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 »
Sunday, 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 »
Sunday, 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 »
Thursday, 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 »
Saturday, 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 »
Wednesday, 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 »
Monday, February 16th, 2009
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
- 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
- Expand Timing (Experts Only) option.
- In the Then Hide it field, select Custom… from the dropdown list box
- Enter the number of seconds (playing time of your movie) in the Hide After: field (see screenshot below)
- 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
Posted in Flash Tips, Toufee 2.0, Toufee Tips | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
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.
Posted in Flash Tips, Movie Maker, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
When publishing Toufee flash movies to their webpages, particularly flash banners, some users have noticed that there is an inconsistency between the actual movie size (Movie -> Movie Size -> Set Custom Size option) and the Movie Size parameter value in the HTML code generated by Toufee. To better illustrate this, consider the following flash movie. This is a sample 200×250 flash banner (width = 200 pixels, height = 250 pixels). What you are looking at is the preview of the flash movie movie in Toufee MovieMaker application.
In the below screenshot, you would notice the Width and Height parameters set to 200 and 250 respectively via the Set Custom Size option (Movie -> Movie Size -> Set Custom Size)
However, when you publish your flash movie, notice that the Height attribute in the HTML code has the value 280 pixels instead of the original value of 250 pixels.
The reason that Toufee adds this additional 30 pixels to your Toufee flash movie is because your Toufee flash movie needs to accomdate the Player Controls (Play, Pause and the Volume controls) at the bottom. This applies to all Toufee flash movies since the default setting is Web Like Player. However, if you are creating flash banners, then you would generally need no Player controls to be shown at the bottom of your flash movie. You can turn of this Player Controls by selecting Movie -> Player Skin Controls -> Hide Player / No Controls as shown in the below screenshot
Now, publish your movie again, but this time you will notice that the HTML code in the Publish Movie window will have the Height parameter set to 250 pixels which is the current setting.
This is actually not a bug but this is the built-in design of Toufee. If Toufee does not add the additional pixels to the Height parameter, you would not have the Player Controls when you use the published HTML code in your webpages for those movies that need the controls. However, for flash banners, following the above steps would remove the problem of the Height parameter inconsistency.
Hope this is useful. Meet you then in my next post!
Ganesh
Posted in Flash Tips, Toufee 2.0, Toufee Tips | No Comments »
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