Chapter 15: Working With Images, Sound, And Video - MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-LEARNING ACTIONSCRIPT 2.0 IN FLASH Manual

CHAPTER 15
15
Working with Images, Sound,
and Video
If you import an image or a sound while you author a document in Macromedia Flash Basic 8
or Macromedia Flash Professional 8, the image and sound are packaged and stored in a SWF
file when you publish it. In addition to importing media while authoring, you can load
external media, including other SWF files, at runtime. You might want to keep media outside
of a Flash document for several reasons.
Reduce file size By keeping large media files outside of your Flash document and loading
them at runtime, you can reduce the initial downloading time for your applications and
presentations, especially over slow Internet connections.
Modularize large presentations You can divide a large presentation or application into
separate SWF files and load those separate files as needed at runtime. This process reduces
initial downloading time and also makes it easier to maintain and update the presentation.
Separate content from presentation
This theme is common in application development,
especially data-driven applications. For example, a shopping cart application might display an
image of each product. By loading each image at runtime, you can easily update a product's
image without modifying the original FLA file.
Take advantage of runtime-only features Some features, such as dynamically loaded Flash
Video (FLV) and MP3 playback, are available only at runtime through ActionScript.
This section describes how to work with image files, sound files, and FLV video in your Flash
applications. For more information, see the following topics:
About loading and working with external media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
Loading external SWF and image files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
About loading and using external MP3 files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .598
Assigning linkage to assets in the library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
About using FLV video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
About creating progress animations for media files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .624
591