Ever wondered how you can show your own custom image, maybe your company logo or your brand identity when your Toufee flash movie is loading in the background? This feature is now available but only for Business Account users.

It is very simple to add your own logo to your Toufee flash movie. Follow the steps below

1.  Login to Toufee

2.  On the Members Home page (the first page you see after login), click on the Settings tab

3. Click on the Logo option

4. Click the Browse button to browse the image file and click on Update >> to add the logo

5. Your new logo will now be available for use with all of your Toufee flash movies in your Business Account. Anytime you want to have the logo show on your movies, simply select Use my custom logo in preloader option in the Publish Movie dialog box (Publish -> Publish Online).

Please note that the custom logo is not enabled by default for the simple reason that not all of your flash movies will take long time to load. Hence you have to select the Use my custom logo in preloader option when you are publishing your Toufee flash movie.

Showing a custom logo as a preloader not only keeps the customer interested when your Toufee flash movie is loading in the background, but helps customers retain brand identity improving your product or service recall value.

I am sure most of you would have noticed that we’ve updated Toufee website. The Members page, i.e. the first page that you see after login, has also undergone a major overhaul in design and strategy. The new Members Home UI is more focused meaning it will let you quickly get on with functions that are used frequently. This tutorial quickly introduces you to the new UI of Members Homepage.

Members Home: The new UI
The new Members Homepage is now divided into major section - Create a New Project and Open a Recent Project

 Create a New Project: This is where you go to get started with a new movie. To create a new movie project, click on the Blank Project (the large moviemaker picture) to open the Toufee MovieMaker window.

Open a Recent Project: This section lists all your Toufee Pro movies (Please note that this section will only list your Toufee Pro movies and not your Toufee Classic movies (if you had previously used Toufee Classic). All paid subscribers with an active Business Account will continue to have access to all their Toufee Classic movies via the Toufee Classic link at the top of the homepage).
This section lists all your movies horizontally (like the Pictures folder in your Windows), so if you want to quickly search for a particular movie, enter the name (partial text will do) of the movie in the Search Projects textbox and click Go. Toufee will now list those movies that match the search criteria. When after a search, you wish to display all your movies, click on the Show All Projects link and Toufee will revert back to displaying all your existing Toufee Pro movies.

The Left Panel

You’ll now notice that the left part of your new UI has the Blog and the Getting Started sections to assist you in your movie making. After a lot of thought and design changes, we identified the Blog and the Getting Started to be of vital importance to assist users in their movie making and provides quick updates of new features/announcements and tutorials. These are also the two sections that are frequently updated by us and hence it made sense to put these directly on the Members Home

Blog: This section lists the most recent articles from Toufee’s Blog, the official source of information for all new updates related to Toufee Movie Maker. Toufee Blog provides the latest updates on Toufee MovieMaker, information on new features, preview of new enhancements, how-to articles on new features and general announcements.

The Blog also provides tips on effective movie-making and guest columns by Toufee users and experienced flash authors. To read an article, click on the article link and you’ll be redirected to that article on Toufee Blog. If you have a RSS reader installed on your PC, then you can subscribe to Toufee Blog by clicking on the RSS Updates link to stay up-to-date with all the new posts that happens on Toufee Blog.

Getting Started: This is where you access all the Video Tutorials and the Step-by-Step Tutorials. We’ve made it such a way that all new tutorials are listed here, so you can be rest assured you don’t miss those easy-to-understand video tutorials. Clicking any tutorial will take you straight to the Tutorials page.

Searching the KnowledgBase:Toufee’s KnowledgeBase is your gateway to all your answers related to anything on Toufee. Toufee’s KnowledgeBase contains FAQs on all topics related to Toufee. You can quickly search the knowledgeBase by typing in a keyword in the KnowledgeBase search textbox and clicking on Go

Additional Links
As you see in the previous screenshot, we’ve also added few quick links on the top right of the screen to make navigation easier. The Get Started redirects you to the Tutorials page and the Help link takes you to the Support Desk Homepage from where you can access all documentation, FAQs and Toufee tutorials and also view/post support tickets to the Toufee Support Desk. The Logout link logs out of the Members Home.

Toufee Pro flash movies can be used to make great Autorun CDs which can be used for a variety of applications like custom-made birthday CD specially for a friend, a corporate flash presentation, video tutorials, etc.

 Step 1: Export your flash movies to SWF
This is the most basic step, you have to get your Toufee Pro flash movies from Toufee’s server onto your PC. The step by step procedure of exporting flash movies to SWF has been covered in the following blog post.
http://www.toufee.com/moviemaker/download-toufee-flash-movies-as-swf-files/

Step 2:  Convert your SWF file into an EXE
Autorun files need to be EXE to work. Your SWF flash movie needs to be converted into a self-executable EXE file so that it runs automatically when the CD is loaded without having to launch another program to open it (which is generally the case with a SWF file).There are a number of free utilities that can convert your SWF file to an EXE. One such program called SWF to EXE 3.0 from Brothersoft can be downloaded from this UR
http://www.brothersoft.com/d.php?soft_id=58065&url=http%3A%2F%2Feurotest.chat.ru%2Ffi%2Fswftoexe.zip

Step 3: Create the AUTORUN.INF configuration file
An autorun CD contains the AUTORUN.INF configuration file that contains information on what program needs to be launched when the CD is inserted. The format of the autorun.inf file is as below

[autorun]
OPEN=FlashFile.exe
ICON=Icon.ico

Open a blank Notepad file, type the above lines (replace FlashFile.exe with the name of our flash movie exe file that you just created). The ICON.ico is for if you want the CD drive to display a specific icon file you’ve included, if not leave that line out. Save this file as “Autorun.inf”

Step 4: Burn the files to CD
Copy the flash movie .exe file and the autorun.inf (that you created in the last step) and burn them onto a blank CD. Please make sure that you put both the .exe and .inf files in the root of the CD. Once the data is tranfered, test the CD and your Toufee flash movie should now popup automatically - looks cool isn’t it?

Toufee Pro’s most popular feature, besides the hundreds of new preset effects, enhancements and new options is the ability to export flash movies to standalone SWF files which allows your flash movies to be played independently on any PC or Mac platform without the need to access Toufee Pro MovieMaker.

[If you are unsure how to export Toufee flash movies to SWF, please refer the following Toufee Blog article http://www.toufee.com/moviemaker/download-toufee-flash-movies-as-swf-files/]

Running SWF files on PC

1. SWF (Shockwave Flash) files can be opened by an standard browser like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Opera etc., Simply drag and drop the SWF file into a browser window and the SWF file will automatically play.

2. SWF can also be run standalone if you have converted the SWF files into EXE files, I’ll cover more on this in the next post.

3. Some SWF files (like Toufee Pro flash movies) require that you have the latest Adobe Flash 9 plugin to run properly. While most browsers do have the latest flash plugin installed automatically, it is always advisable to have this downloaded from the following URL
www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=shockwaveFlash

Problems running SWF files
The most common problem with running SWF file is directly related to not having the latest Adobe Flash plugin. Installing the latest flash plugin resolves this most of the time. In some cases, a corrupt SWF file may also not run properly, and this can be corrected by redownloading the file.

Ganesh

Publishing Toufee flash movies had always been easier and the same continues with our new improved Publish feature of Toufee Pro. The new Publish window of Toufee Pro offers much more support and functionality than its earlier version (Toufee Classic). Besides, we have direct publishing support to a number of new social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut etc., or to blogs like Blogger, WordPress so you never have to run around copying and pasting HTML code or having to login to multiple sites if you want to publish the same movie to many social networking sites.

Toufee Pro allows you to directly publish your flash movies to the following sites -MySpace, Comment, Friendster, Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, Tagged, Blogger, Hi5, Live Spaces, Piczo, Freewebs, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, myYearbook, WordPress, Vox, TypePad, Xanga, Multiply, iGoogle, Netvibes, Pageflakes, MiGente

Invoking the Publish window
You access the Publish window by selecting the Publish Online option from the Publish menu (Publish -> Publish online). You’ll find the new Publish window (shown below) has all the options at one-click making publishing flash movies easier.

You can simply publish your flash movies to your favorite site by clicking on the appropriate button. You’ll also notice the Copy button if all you want is to copy the HTML code so that you can paste it in your website (if you are running your own) or to a blog which is not listed in the Publish window.

Example: Posting to MySpace
As you have noticed, the new one-click publish has made it easier to publish and saves you a lot of time. Let’s say you want to publish your movie to MySpace. All you have to do is click on the MySpace button on the Publish window and you’ll see a MySpace login information.

Enter your MySpace login information and select the section under which you want the movie to be posted and Toufee posts the flash movie to your MySpace profile in no time. On successful completion, you’ll see a “Message Posted” dialog box as shown below.

Bookmarking Flash Movies
Besides publishing flash movies to sites, Toufee Pro also allows you to bookmark your flash movie to popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us etc. through which your flash movies get quickly shared to millions of people around the globe. Click on the Bookmark link on the Publish window to open the Add Bookmark

When you click on the appropriate button for the site, for example, Digg, your movie is automatically added to Digg and the confirmation window will popup as shown below.

Make the most of it now!
Toufee Pro’s powerful publishing features allows you to quickly and easily share your flash movie to billions of people around the globe. The one-click publishing feature removes the need to manually copy and paste HTML code and importantly saves a lot of your valuable time so you can give your creative abilities shape with Toufee Pro.

All flash movies created with Toufee Pro sports a movie-player look with all the playing controls enabled by default. The movie player skin allows easy functionality to quickly pause/stop movies or jump to specific timelines using the Timing bar. However, if you are developing a flash movie for your website or a flash banner, then you would ideally like to have just your flash movie without any sort of player or controls.  You can do so by selecting the Hide Player /No Controls option under the Player Skin / Controls submenu of the Movie menu (Movie -> Player Skin / Controls -> Hide Player / No Controls).

Settings this option removes the YouTube-like player skin from your current flash movie. If the flash movie is posted on your website, then please remember to Save and Publish your flash movie (copy the new HTML code from the publish window onto your website/blog where you’ve posted your flash movie) again for the changes to be reflected in your website.

The Hide Player /No Controls is not the default option, so you have to set it manually for those movies you do not wish to have the player skin.

Hope this helps, please leave your comments, if any.

Ganesh

Starting with Toufee Pro, we are building a completely self-referential and comprehensive reference guide for Toufee by way of the new Toufee KnowledgeBase. The KnowledgeBase can be accessed by going to http://www.toufee.com/support

Toufee’s KnowledgeBase will act as the first point of reference and support for common questions and how-to’s related to Toufee Pro. We’ve  justed started adding articles to Toufee’s KB (KnowledgeBase for short) and as we move along, you’ll find the KnowledgeBase grow in content and depth, covering a broad range of FAQs, How-To’s and also targeted tutorials covering major functionalities of Toufee Pro.

The homepage of the KnowledgeBase list all the popular FAQs that were searched for. If you wish to look at topics by category then click on the KnowledgeBase link to access the various FAQs and articles grouped by category as shown in the below page.

I am sure that users now know where to go to look for FAQs? Still can’t find what you’re looking for? No worries, you can quickly submit your query to support by clicking on the Submit a Support Ticket link found on the KnowledgeBase homepage. Hope this helps. Explore the Toufee’s KnowledgeBase and if you a common FAQ listed, you can always raise a support ticket and we’ll add that to the KnowledgeBase!

Ganesh

If you had read my previous article on downloading Toufee flash movies as SWF, I would have mentioned that it was one of the top requested features of Toufee Pro (i.e Toufee 2.0 version). So, what was the most requested feature (and it still is)? You guessed it right, its uploading Toufee flash movies to YouTube

Download Toufee Pro (Convertor)
Before you can upload your Toufee flash movies to YouTube, you have to convert them to “compatible” video formats (AVI, MOV, MPG) that YouTube supports. We’ll this takes a lot of time and a lot of steps and patience to get this done all yourself. So we developed a standalone tool called Toufee Pro (Convertor) that fetches the movies from your Toufee Pro account, converts it into a video file that you can then upload to YouTube.

How to get the Toufee Pro (Convertor)?
Its just a click away - simply select the Export to YouTube option from the Publish menu and you are ready to go. Once you select the option, you’ll be presented a dialog window (shown below) from where you can directly download the Toufee Pro Convertor. The installation package is around 3.5mb and should download in no time. Installation is a pretty simple process and should you be up and running in no time.

Converting movies using Toufee Pro (Convertor)
Once downloaded and installed, you have to login to Toufee Pro Convertor using your Toufee account login ID and password. On successful login, all your movies created using Toufee Pro will be listed. Select a movie and the conversion process will immediately begin (as show in the screenshot below).

You might also see the Downloading Media Files message (as in the below screenshot) showing up after the conversion process is complete.

Once the conversion process if fully complete (i.e. including the Downloading Media Files process), yo’ll be prompted to save your Toufee flash movie file. The flash movie now gets saved as a .AVI file on your PC, but that is not all, there are still a few steps left to upload your movie to YouTube. Once your movie is saved to your hard drive, you’ll now be presented the YouTube upload screen

Here is where you enter a suitable description for your flash movie. You also enter Tags or keywords that allow your movie to be searched by other YouTube users. Make sure your description is comprehensive enough and your keywords closely relate to the content of your flash movie. You also select the Category of your movie in the above section. After completing all the details, click on Upload to YouTube button and you’ll immediately notice a popup message. Click OK.

A browser window then opens bringing up the following YouTube page

Click Allow Access button. In the following screen, you’ll be asked to login to your YouTube account. Enter your login details and once you login to your YouTube account, Toufee Pro convertor starts uploading the converted movie to your account. You’ll be able to view the progress as shown below.

That’s it. Once the upload is complete, you’ll find the new flash movie in your YouTube account. Please note that this involves quite a few steps and you’ll notice that it will take a while to convert depending on the size of your flash movies. The speed also depends on your internet bandwidth as Toufee Pro Convertor downloads your movie, converts it into a video file, uploads the file back to YouTube, all of these involve lot of data to be transfered to and fro Toufee and YouTube servers. So its imperative that you are on a good internet connection to avoid delay or timeout issues.

I know it was a long wait for thousands of users who wanted to upload their Toufee flash movies to YouTube, but not any more now!

Ganesh

One of the top features of Toufee Pro is the ability to download the flash movies as SWF file to the PC so that users can keep a copy of their work offline. This was a feature request that we regularly happened to get ever since we started work on Toufee Pro. We’ve finally got this incorporated into Toufee Pro and it just takes a couple of clicks to get your flash movie downloaded to your PC as SWF file.

Where is this option?
You’ll find the option under the Publish menu - select Export to Flash (Standalone SWF) and you are ready to go!

A few pointers though…
There are a few things that I would like you to look into to finish it up nicely. Firstly, open the Toufee movie by selecting File -> Open Existing. Let’s quickly look at some options.

Set Movie Size
Make sure have set the Movie Size to the ideal dimension. You can set this option from the Movie menu (Movie -> Movie Size). If you are making a presentation, you would ideally want to have a bigger in which case you chose HiDef (640×480). If you are simply publishing it to the web, or hosting it on your website you have two choices - you can either go for the Set Custom Size (ideal for creating banner flash movie for your website) or choose the Video (320×240). There is also the Web Page (800×600) option but let me keep it on hold for a while as I will be covering that in my future post.

Set Movie to AutoStart
All Toufee flash movies are set to autostart by default, however, if you had selected the Paused at Start option, you might want to change it back to autostart since when you are saving your flash movie as SWF you’d ideally want them to start playing automatically. You can set your movie to Autostart by selecting the Automatically after load of the Movie Starts Playing option under Movie menu (Movie -> Movie Starts Playing -> Automatically after load).

Configure Player Skin/Controls
Again, since you are saving your flash movie to an SWF file, you’d rather prefer not to have player controls (Pause/Stop buttons, timing bar, volume control), which is fitting if you are publishing the SWF file to your website or would just like to keep it stored on your PC.
Select Hide Players / No Controls of the Player Skin / Controls option under the movie menu (Movie -> Player Skin/Controls -> Hide Players/No Controls).

I can guess that most of you are raring to go and download your flash movies as SWF. Hope you enjoy making flash movies with Toufee. Have fun!

Ganesh

Hi

To all those Mac users, I assume you probably had problems uploading files (i.e. images/audio/video) to Toufee from your Mac.

Worry not, as we’ve now come up with a new way to upload particularly for Mac users. First of all, clear your browser cache to load the latest version of Toufee (clearing cache loads Toufee afresh from our servers). Open the Toufee Movie Maker (opens in a popup window). Now when you click on the Upload button on the right panel, you’ll find a new button called Trouble Uploading? button (please refer to screenshot below). This is an HTML uploader that we created for users who weren’t able to upload previously in Mac.

Hope this helps. If the problem still persits, please raise a support ticket via the Support Desk.

Ganesh