PreLoading Has Me Stumped?

[hohriver]

Okay. I give up. I have to ask for help. I've tried to mimic every @*^&@! "preloader' .fla I can find "out there", and still can't get it to work right.

Here's the situation:
I have an animated gif. It's 40 frames in length. I want it to be the 'preloader' sequence.

My movie it's preceding is 400 frames in length.

Now, what do I do? Create a New Symbol 'movie clip' and import the animation? Then apply the If Frame is Loaded
etc. target actions to keyframes in the clip?

If so, why doesn't my clip show up or play in the actual movie? The best I can seem to get is the first 'frame' of the clip, with no animation and no other frames. And it just opens and stops there, doesn't move on to the main event.

Totally stuck. I own SIX damned books on Flash 4, two on Flash 5, I browse FlashPlanet, and Flashkit, and Tek-Tips Flash forum....and everyone seems to have a 'different' way of creating a preloader....and I've tried mimicing at least five of these and they're just not doint it for me.

Does anyone have like a GENERIC step-by-step basic ways to utilize a short animated gif to provide a preloader sequence for larger file size Flash movies? Please?

 

[davdesign]

send me your gif and I'll create your preloader for you withfull explanation to go with it.

dave dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[davdesign]

hi R

e-mail sent with fla. Tested and working well. Paste your existing layers into the movie at the "site" label. If you have any problems let me know.

dave dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[hohriver]

Can't open the .fla....receive the error message 'Unexpected file format'....as if perhaps this .fla was built with 5.0? I'm trying to open it in 4.0. And yes, I do
HAVE 5.0 (a different machine)....but the Flash project I'm engaged in is for
'work', and the company has only approved and distributed the 4.0 plug-in for
viewing. I'm stuck with 4.0 on this one.

Although I'm disappointed that I can't see your handiwork, it does not diminish
my gratitude for your trying to help me out of my jam. Thank you very much
for your efforts.

I'll copy this to a floppy and get it to my other machine sometime today to see
if it will open in Flash 5.

R.

 

[oldnewbie]

Have a look at this one:

http://www.oldnewbie.f2s.com/gifloader.swf

http://www.oldnewbie.f2s.com/gifloader.fla

A few notes:
Since this preloader only preloads a short scene (scene 2), you won't see it for very long. I didn't have anything longer on hand. I've added a usual loading text over the gif, because depending on the size of your gif, it will not appear before it has preloaded itself, leaving a blank screen while it's loading. You can get rid of it, if you want, as you can eliminate the extra start button, leaving you with a 2 frame preloader.
Note that the important keyframe is the first one. This one checks for a label placed on the last frame of scene 2. You could also use _totalframes.

Also remember to use streaming when checking this locally. The files are on your computer... No need to preload them!
If you want to check twice online, remember to empty your cache between views for the same reason: once downloaded, the files are on your machine, so no need for preloaders again.

;-)

 

[davdesign]

e-mail already sent with f4 version. ;-) dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[oldnewbie]

Grrrrrrrrrr!

 

[davdesign]

;-) LOL dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[oldnewbie]

Have you you been to the Round Table lately?

;-)

 

[maresh]

I have done more movies in a site and they load now very slowly and with interruptions. I can't find rapidly a solution to get rid of these interruptions. Should I use a preloader? Which type? (the movies / scenes play one after another) Grateful for any solution, thank you.

 

[oldnewbie]

Your movie is probably streaming while it's downloading, thus the interruptions. A preloader would be better, to at least download enough of the file so that there's no interruptions. Several preloaders scripts around.
You might want to check these...

http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-...arch&sp-a=00040c2f-sp00000000&sp-w-control=1;

Regards,