Interactive QuickTime Authoring, Part 5

It's been quite some time since I've revisited this somewhat long-running series, and while I've had pressing issues such as the annual springtime mulch-a-thon and "Must See TV" to tend to, I figured what the hey, might as well crank out another QuickTime Authoring piece that I know DMN readers are so anxiously awaiting. This time we're going to set our sights on a program that many of you already have but may not be using in this capacity: Macromedia's Flash MX.

What It Does

In case you've been living under a rock for the last five or so years, Flash is the nearly ubiquitous web animation and multimedia format that, depending on whom you talk to, represents either the greatest thing to happen to the Internet or the end of life on Earth as we currently know it. Flash has more or less grown to rock star status, known to developers and end users alike by name. And thanks to a huge "Flash Everywhere" push from Macromedia, as well as the fact that the Flash SWF format is a (somewhat) open one, Flash is slowly but surely creeping off the web and becoming a more general purpose animation and multimedia output format. But did you also know that for some time now, the Flash authoring program has been capable of importing and exporting native QuickTime movies? It's true! Throw in Flash MX's new video capabilities, and developers now have a couple of options for producing interactive QuickTime from within Flash.

How It Uses QuickTime

As I may have mentioned, most likely in the last two or three sentences, QuickTime has been a native import and export format in Flash for a while. The converse is also true: QuickTime supports SWF files natively, albeit usually a version behind the latest and greatest release of the SWF file format. As of this writing, Flash can import and export QuickTime 6 files (if you have QT6 installed, that is), and QuickTime 6 can handle SWF tracks in version 5 format or earlier. And as I also may have mentioned, there are a couple of ways Flash can work with QuickTime clips, so let's take a look-see.

Exporting .MOV files

While the goal of most "Flashers" is to create compact, vector-based interactive animations in the SWF file format, you can use a lot of Flash's functionality in conjunction with QuickTime movies to create MOV files with embedded Flash tracks. Whether you want to create custom player controls, have text or animations that are synchronized to a video track, or just want an easy way to add titles, graphics or other embellishments to an existing movie, QuickTime export out of Flash MX may be able to help you.

When you use the File->Import dialog in Flash MX to import a QuickTime movie, you're presented with a selection box, shown in Figure 1. The link to video option, shown selected, should be used when your final output is a MOV file, and the embed video option should be used when you want to transcode your QuickTime clip to the Flash Video format (more on that later). You'll most likely be confronted with a box which warns you that you don't have enough frames to accommodate the video you're linking to, and which kindly offers to insert the correct number for you (fig. 2). Unless you turn this feature off, chances are that once you start working with a lot of video in Flash, embedded or linked, you'll see this dialog box much more than you'd care to.

Figure 1: Flash MX's Import Video panel, with the link option selected.

Figure 2: You and this helpful dialog box will probably be seeing a lot of each other.

In any event, the only other trick to using Flash for direct QuickTime authoring is to correctly configure your publish settings. Select File->Publish Settings, check the Flash and Quicktime checkboxes as your output formats, and you're pretty much good to go. There are a lot of familiar QuickTime options in the QuickTime tab (fig. 3), and as long as you have Flash Player 5 compatibility selected in the Flash tab (fig. 4), your final QuickTime 6 movie will be a happy camper when displaying your original clip and added Flash content together.

Figure 3: The QuickTime options within Flash MX's Publish Settings panel.

Figure 4: To make QuickTime happy, subtract one Flash version from the QuickTime version you're targeting. In this case, QuickTime 6 = Flash 5.

Of course, it's probably a good idea to discuss some limitations to this approach. When adding Flash content that's meant to be exported as QuickTime, you have to make sure you're using supported ActionScript code for whatever Flash Player version you've targeted—SWF 5 for QuickTime 6, SWF 4 for QuickTime 5, and so on. If you've selected the appropriate Flash Player version already in the Publish Settings box, Flash will warn you if you've used any scripts you shouldn't have when you try to compile the SWF file.

Also, this method isn't true QuickTime "wiring," in the sense that you're actually writing any QuickTime-native scripts. You're pretty much limited to making things happen as the source QuickTime movie plays, as in the Flash authoring environment the QuickTime movie occupies frames like any other movie clip, and you sync up Flash events and ActionScripts to correspond to the playing of the QuickTime clip (fig. 5). This shortcoming notwithstanding, there are still a lot of options for interactive MOV files from within Flash MX, so go nuts.

Figure 5: Once your linked QuickTime movie is in Flash, it appears like any other asset in Flash's Timeline.

Native Flash video

Now, there may be times where you either want 1) your QuickTime clips to have a little more interactivity than what can be accomplished by exporting MOV files out of Flash, or 2) to make your clips a little more platform and player-agnostic by converting them from QuickTime to native Flash files. Fortunately, Flash MX introduces a native video format for your consideration: FLV, or Flash Video.

The easiest way to convert QuickTime files into Flash Video is, unsurprisingly, choosing the Embed Video option when importing your QuickTime movie (fig. 6), which I alluded to earlier. You'll then be shown options for Flash MX's built in Sorenson Spark encoder (fig. 7), which will convert your QuickTime movie to FLV format. Once it's there, your clip shows up in the Flash library panel like any other imported asset (fig. 8), subject to whatever you want to throw at it within the comfy borders of the full suite of Flash MX ActionScript and ultimately ready for export in SWF format. Possibilities, possibilities...

Figure 6: Again, here's Flash MX's Import Video panel, this time with the embed video option selected.

Figure 7: The somewhat-disabled-but-still-useful QuickTime to Flash transcoding panel.

Figure 8: Your transcoded QuickTime clips appear as a single asset in the Flash Library.

Now, the Spark encoder that ships with Flash MX is little more than a subset of advanced features that can be had by purchasing an add-on FLV encoder. The options available by default often leave much to be desired when compressing QuickTime files, almost requiring an additional purchase to achieve quality compression. Sorenson would prefer you purchase their Spark Pro option as part of their Squeeze product for Flash MX. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never tried Squeeze, so I don't know how well it does or doesn't compress to FLV format. However, I have tried, bought, and wholeheartedly recommend any of Wildform's Flix products. In my case, I bought the ridiculously inexpensive Flix Lite (fig. 9), which does an excellent job of transcoding QuickTime (as well as other video formats) to FLV, and the resulting file can be imported directly into Flash MX.

Figure 9: The Video settings in Wildform's Flix Lite.

And while we're on the subject of transcoding, may I remind you that converting any QuickTime video to Flash Video is an exercise in the recompression of one codec to another. Poor quality QuickTime will likely become even poorer quality Flash Video during the process, so it's always a good idea to use the most pristine source video you can get a hold of for best results.

Another problem with using native Flash Video, at least that I've found, is that performance can be somewhat spotty the longer a movie clip gets. Long clips, especially when you've implemented some sort of random access features for the user, sometimes can become out of sync with any embedded audio, and I've found that the RAM requirements on the user's end can become unnecessarily high when wrangling long video clips.

I've also found that Flash Video isn't a very good solution for displaying large resolution (640x480 or larger, but your mileage may vary) movies for a couple of reasons. One, playback performance really degrades on most average systems the larger you attempt to make your Flash Video clip. It's not unusual to see over half of your frames drop out when playing back larger movies, while the source QuickTime files from whence they came play beautifully on the same system. Also, large clips tend to compress, for lack of a better word, suckily. You'll probably get a lot of nasty JPEG-gy artifacts, so generally I'd warn against trying to incorporate large resolution clips in Flash. Overall, however, I've found that the convenience and flexibility of Flash Video far outweigh whatever "gotchas" have emerged.

Also...

It's worth a mention here that when importing still image files, if Flash MX doesn't recognize the image type you're attempting to bring in, it gives you the option of handing the image off to QuickTime to have a crack at it (fig. 10). Ultimately, this means that every still image format QuickTime can understand is made available as a supported file type in Flash. While this tidbit isn't really directly related to QuickTime authoring, it's just a gentle reminder of how QuickTime integration can really enhance a program's feature set.

Figure 10: Why, yes. I would. Thank you.

So Now What?

It's not hard to track down a copy of Flash MX, as it's available in a wide variety of places, including, I believe, newspaper kiosks and vending machines (right next to the Snickers bars). Whether you download a demo or purchase a version directly from Macromedia or walk down to your local Computer Super-Mega-Huge-A-Mongous Store to grab a copy off the shelf, Flash MX will set you back upwards of $499 ($199 upgrade) by itself or $899 ($199 upgrade) as part of the Macromedia Studio bundle, which also includes MX-branded versions of Fireworks, Freehand, and Dreamweaver (as well as ColdFusion and Contribute for Windows folk).

NEXT TIME - Part 6: QuickTime Authoring and Macromedia's Formerly 800 lb. Gorilla (not a repeat!)

Filed under: Feature on May 5th, 2003

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