If you had ever downloaded your flash movie that has a background music attached, as a FLV or a AVI video file, you’d have noticed that the audio is out of sync with the video. When the rendering engine converts the raw Flex flash movie to a video file, there always seems to be a differential delay in matching the video to the audio track. The differential delay is caused by various factors such as the current load on the server, pending requests, etc. We are still trying to figure out how to normalize the delay factor so that audio mismatch effectively be nullified. However, a workaround to the problem, though a bit lengthy, is this:
1) Remove the sound track from the flash movie. The following KB article provides instructions:
2) Download the flash movie as a video file (this renders the video without the sound track)
3) Use a third-party software such as Windows Movie Maker, DubIt to add the sound track back again to the video file. DubIt can be downloaded from the following link:
I hope that helps. We still do apologize for the inconvenience caused by the audio timing mismatch. Our engineers are working to see if there is an alternate fix that they could implement to resolve the problem. Note that the issue happens only when the flash movie has a background music attached to it.
Some users may have noted that for some videos that they upload into the Flash Builder, they’re greeted with a “Video is processing” message. The problem was that users find the message continues to persists even hours after the actual upload. At times, they don’t get to see the video at all. I’d thought I’d give some background as to what exactly happens. When you upload a video and try to drag it to the Flash Builder stage the first time, Toufee puts a “Video Processing” banner. This banner is actually an image. When you open your project the next time, this banner would be replaced with the actual video that was processed. What we’ve noted is that the browser tends to cache this banner image even after the video is successfully processed. Users thus tend to see this image everytime leading to think that the video is still under process. To fix the problem, one has to clear the browser cache. The following page has instructions on how to clear the browser cache
Why does Toufee processes uploaded video files? Toufee requries that the video files be converted to the FLV format so that it is compatible to work with. When you upload a MOV or WMV file to your account, Toufee tries to convert this file to the FLV format. When it does, you see the video processing message. So the next time you have to upload a video, prefer the FLV format if its available.
It is also possible to bypass the video processing completely. If you see any issues with upload, please let me know by opening a Support Ticket and I could upload the video bypassing the video processing.
Hello everyone, its been a while since the last blog and it couldn’t be a good time to write a new post. I keep getting queries to our Support Desk about the use of the enlarge image option found in the Flash Apps ( 3D Carousel, CoverFlow etc). It seems that there is confusion as there is no clear documentation as to how to use this feature. I thought its right time to clarify this through this blog entry. The enlarge option is used to show images in a popup window (like a preview) when the smaller version of the image. The enlarge image option can be accessed by selecting an image in any of the Flash Apps initial upload screen
The the confusion arises with this question – how do I provide the smaller and the enlarged version of every image? There seems to be no option in the Flash Apps to be able to achieve this. This is the true and the other fact is that Toufee actually doesn’t show any enlarged version. The idea around the enlarge image is this – when one uses Flash Apps like 3D Carousel, Flash CoverFlow Maker, you’ll notice the initial images that are displayed are smaller or reduced by 1/4th in proportion to the original image size. This is the default setting to allow the 3D Carousel or the Flash CoverFlow to operate. When one clicks on the image, the original image is shown. This is what we refer as the enlarged image (note that we don’t enlarge the image).
As opposed to the meaning of enlarged, what exactly happens is the contrary – Toufee actually shows reduced sized images in the initial screen of the Carousel or a CoverFlow flash movie. The enlarge option actually initiates Toufee to show the actual size of the image.
The above CoverFlow flash movie show thumbnails or icons of the images. When one clicks an image, the original size of the image is shown. All the images used in the above flash movie are 640×480 pixels. The size of the thumbnails are 160×120. The important factor to consider is to set your Carousel flash movie size to 640×480. The idea is to set the canvas size of the flash movie to the same size (or higher) to those of your images. This allows the flash movie to show the entire image when the enlarged option is clicked.
The problem many customers seem to have is that they used very high resolution images but set the flash movie area to half its size. This caused the image to get cut-off when the enlarge image is shown.
The Flash Builder has a feature called Movie Presets that lets you set a defined preset (or a group of settings) to all the flash movie items. While we are working on making the Movie Presets more robust, you’ll for now find only two basic presets – Slideshow and Simple Fade. In the article, we’ll talk about Simple Fade, which as the name suggests, sets a Simple Fade for the In Effect and the Out Effect for all the items.
To access Movie Presets, click the Presets button on the left panel. Then click the Movie Presets option
The Movie Presets will expand to reveal the two options – Slideshow and Simple Fading. Click the Simple Fading button
You’ll see a dialog box that asks if you wish to apply the Simple Fade. Click Yes
All the flash movie items’s In Effect and Out Effect settings should now be reset to Simple Fade.
I hope you find this setting useful. We do admit that there is a lot of work to be done on Movie Preset. We could allow saving a lot more options as Preset at a global level which you may apply on every other flash movie.
That’s it for now, have a good weekend and Happy Easter to all our customers.
In this post, we’ll discuss about the concept of layers and how you could utilize layers to arrange the image and text items the way you want in your flash movie. One may think Layers as stacks (or a pile of books), that lets you customize (arrange), flash movie items such as text and images. An item in the topmost layer has full visibility or is shown completely. Items that are lower in the Layer ordering may have other flash items displayed (partially or fully) over it.
Why need Layers?
Let’s take a simple example where you want to display a text item directly over an image in your flash movie. If you added the text item first and then the image, then in the normal case, the image would be placed directly over the image causing the text to be not viewable. To overcome the problem, you’d have to add the image first and then add the text item to your flash movie. This approach however may not be feasible when you have to work with a number of text or image items. This is where Layers are useful. With the Layers concept, you may re-arrange the layer order/stack order of the items such that one is shown over the other or vice-versa.
Where is the Layers Option in Flash Builder?
If you open the flash movie and go to the Timeline bar at the bottom you will notice that the images and text item labels will be listed. This is actually the ordering of the layers of the flash movie. To clarify, each item (text, button, image or video) that you place in your flash movie is created in its own layer. In the Timing bar where you see all the items listed vertically, you will notice a big horizontal bar over which you will find each item label (such as “Text1″ or “Image4″, or “Button1″).
This horizontal bar represents the layer, one for each item. To move the item’s layer, simply click on the empty area in the big horizontal bar of each item. Do not click over the item label or inside the item label area as this select the item…one has to click outside of the Item label text. Once you click it, the layer will be selected and you could then move the item layer up or down by drag it to move up or move down. So when you have images that take up the entire flash movie area and you wish to have text items show over or on the image, then you move the Text Items higher up the order in the Timeline and move down the image items below the text items.
First of all, wish all our Toufee customers and readers of this blog a very Happy and a Prosperous New Year 2012. As I start to think about the first blog entry for the new year, I decided to cover aspects of the Toufee Flash Builder as well as the Flash Apps that are often overlooked. The items discussed below are those that are frequently asked at the Support Desk but do not have any documentation elsewhere on the site. I hope this blog should add more clarity to customers for now.
Watch out for the filename
When saving your flash movie project, make sure you don’t use an existing project name to save a new project. Toufee simply overwrites any existing project file that exists by the same name without any warning. This applies to Flash Builder-type projects as well as any of the other Flash Apps. This does look awkward and we’re fully aware of this glitch. The technical team is working on putting a warning note very soon.
Popup Blocker message keeps popping up
If you happen to use hyperlinks in your flash movie, then you may noticed that every time that you click on the link, Toufee opens a popup blocker warning window. This happens even if you had turned off the popup blocker setting for your browser. Weird? Well Toufee actually displays this warning regardless of your popup blocker setting, i.e. Toufee displays the warning all times. However, many customers have reported that it doesn’t look any good on their flash movies. We’re coming up with a fix to this very soon.
Clicked the SWF or YouTube download option but no effect
When using the SWF download option, you may have noticed that clicking the SWF icon in the Publish Project window results in nothing happening…you don’t seem to get the SWF download prompt. The same may hold true when using the YouTube download option…absolutely nothing. The gotcha here is that Toufee happens to open a new browser window (that initiates the SWF file download or YouTube video queued message) and this new window gets opened in the background, i.e. you may notice this visually when you have multiple browser tabs or windows opens. So the next time this happens, please do check all open browser windows for the SWF download prompt or the Video Queued message.
No option to delete Image, Audio or Video?
This might be a bomber. The reason that this option was turned off is due to the fact that when you add an image or an audio to your flash movie, Toufee only maintains a reference to the uploaded content and does not embed the image or audio unless to export the flash movie as a SWF file. When we did have the option to delete the uploaded content, users started to delete images that were still in use with other projects and some users deleted the image after adding it to a project thinking it would be saved along with the project file. This resulted in many customer movies going and we had to temporarily turn off the delete option to avoid data loss.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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
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.
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:
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)
