User Forum

Hello,

I've known Flash like an aquaintance over the years, but now I find myself using it actively for AxisTV, and consequent applications. I tend to want to see them as video commercials, which they are not; but before I assumed it was like the red-headed stepchild in comparison, I had to reset my thinking about Flash in this manner. What you can do is assist your shockwave files with having a video-like black background--not only as the document background setting itself, but in actually creating a bottom layer, calling it "blk background" and making it black--ensuring that you will have that black transition you're looking for, between flash messages.--This would treat it like video, because black backgrounds are native to video. --I give the credit to my supervisor for advising me to create these files in this way, as I got used to creating Flash messages for this purpose.

When you want to position anything to the stage, go to the the align palette section, and click on "To stage:" on it's far right--then you can align anything you've created for the scene, whether it be text or graphics, perfectly in place every time. With backgrounds I would have the stage button enabled while centering, both horizontally and vertically, and boom--there it is. Plus, don't forget your X and Y values in the Properties menu at the bottom; this has "justified" many a true placement of elements, if their positions were ever in question, from one frame to another.

Enjoy! :)

jlewis12

I've been using Flash extensively for several years but have had very little luck using it with our signs.  It seems that the only files I can get to play on the sign are those that have animation taking place across the timeline (which is very old school for flash since everything-even the animation is done with code now for the most part).  Any movies I add that use code or only have one frame where a movieClip would play just seem to get skipped in the playlist.  They may appear for a split second but disappear even when the duration for that item is set to longer in the scheduling piece.  I have a movie that consumes an RSS feed I want to use in particular.  Is it something I'm doing wrong or is the player's support of Flash very limited?

cpalmer,

I've been able to get some technical direction for you concerning Actionscript, 2 resources we have for it and how it is handled inside of our digital software--
First - Here's a quote from inside our site:

*****
AxisTV Support of Flash Animations

AxisTV version 6.0.0 and newer support Flash animations provided the intended Players include the Flash Player and are licensed from the Content Server.
Effectively integrating Flash animations may require experimentation to identify the optimal playback performance of all the elements associated with a Channel Player.

Some general guidelines:

Use only tweened animation and set the movie frame rate to 12 fps (frames per second)

The movie should not include action script*, loops, user-interactive elements or video

The pixel height and width (800x600) and the aspect ratio should match the physical size of the content block scheduled to host the animation

The Flash player does not always take advantage of hardware acceleration. The greater the number of simultaneous processes you require the Player to perform, the more likely you are to see visual degradation. For example, if you run a wallpaper, MPEG videos, Flash movies, an RSS ticker and a video window at the same time, you might not be satisfied with the visual performance. As more systems are used in the field, we have noticed performance degradation in the playback of some media files when the GC1 widescreen option is used. The GC1 is manufactured by a third party. As they update the drivers to improve performance in certain areas, others tend to suffer. If you do not need to specifically match the native resolution of a display, you might be better off using the onboard Intel chipset

*Some clients do use action script to create a loop when they want a Flash movie to always play as part of the background or wallpaper. This technique requires a dedicated content block with a single "looping" movie that "plays" forever.

***

Secondly, here is a public access URL where you might also find an explanation and hopefully a solution, as well:
http://support.techelec.com/support/index.php?x=&mod_id=2&id=348

We hope that helps!

--Jodi

Thanks for the info.  That is what I figured but I was hoping maybe there was something I might be missing.