Aliased type problem

[Duncan]

This is probably pretty basic, but I can't find
anything in the Flash Bible or on Macromedia's
support site that pertains to this specific
problem.

I'm animating some type (not a text block or
field), having it fade in and out. The type is a
series of short phrases, all of which have been
converted to symbols, and the fade is done using
brightness, not alpha.

The effects look great in the editing window,in
the test window, and in the standalone flash
player - but once the swf is placed in an html
page, and plays in the browser, the type is
aliasing horribly - it looks all scraggly, is
barely readable until just before the animation
stops, and then it suddenly clears up and
antialiases beautifully again. This same effect
is also evident on some of my animated vector
objects, but is not as pronounced there.

(I'm using Flash 4, on Win 98, have tried
exporting to both Flash 3 and Flash 4 formats,
setting quality to "High" or Auto=High", it
doesn't seem to make a difference. Problem is
evident in both Netscape and IE).

Oh, yes, here's the really odd part - I've applied
this effect nine times in the course of the movie,
and even in the browser it looks fine the first
few times, then the type starts breaking up on the
third or fourth time, and continues to break up
through the rest of the movie until just before
all the animation stops. I've checked and
re-checked, but I can't find anything different
about the particular frame where the problem
starts to occur - there's nothing happening at
that point on any other layers that isn't
happening before & after as well. And just to
add to my confusion, the problem doesn't always
occur at exactly the same frame - when I hit the
browser's "reload" (or "refresh") button, the next
time the movie plays, the aliasing can start or
end up to five or six frames from where it
originally appeared.

You can see the swf here.

Anyone have a clue what's causing this?

thanks,

Duncan

[This message was edited by Duncan Eagleson on September 15, 2000 at 01:17 PM.]

[Duncan]

This is probably pretty basic, but I can't find
anything in the Flash Bible or on Macromedia's
support site that pertains to this specific
problem.

I'm animating some type (not a text block or
field), having it fade in and out. The type is a
series of short phrases, all of which have been
converted to symbols, and the fade is done using
brightness, not alpha.

The effects look great in the editing window,in
the test window, and in the standalone flash
player - but once the swf is placed in an html
page, and plays in the browser, the type is
aliasing horribly - it looks all scraggly, is
barely readable until just before the animation
stops, and then it suddenly clears up and
antialiases beautifully again. This same effect
is also evident on some of my animated vector
objects, but is not as pronounced there.

(I'm using Flash 4, on Win 98, have tried
exporting to both Flash 3 and Flash 4 formats,
setting quality to "High" or Auto=High", it
doesn't seem to make a difference. Problem is
evident in both Netscape and IE).

Oh, yes, here's the really odd part - I've applied
this effect nine times in the course of the movie,
and even in the browser it looks fine the first
few times, then the type starts breaking up on the
third or fourth time, and continues to break up
through the rest of the movie until just before
all the animation stops. I've checked and
re-checked, but I can't find anything different
about the particular frame where the problem
starts to occur - there's nothing happening at
that point on any other layers that isn't
happening before & after as well. And just to
add to my confusion, the problem doesn't always
occur at exactly the same frame - when I hit the
browser's "reload" (or "refresh") button, the next
time the movie plays, the aliasing can start or
end up to five or six frames from where it
originally appeared.

You can see the swf here.

Anyone have a clue what's causing this?

thanks,

Duncan

[This message was edited by Duncan Eagleson on September 15, 2000 at 01:17 PM.]

[Duncan]

PS: Looks like this may be a Windows related
issue - someone checked this out on a Mac, and
said the type looked fine in both browsers.

I've checked it on three different Windows
machines now (two 98, one 95), in both browsers,
and they all show the scraggly aliased type.

--D

[Mark (theKeeper)]

I've checked it out using Win98 in IE5, and reloaded the page 4x and every time the text looked just fine to me. No jaggies that could notice.

I also sized the browser up and down (i use 1024 res), and it still looked fine to me.

Don't suspect a "Windows" problem specifically persay. But it may be your particular Windows settings at work here also. Hard to nail that one though because of everyone's own specific setups with their systems.

I also checked it several times using Netscape 4.8, and no problems there either.

I use an ATI Rage Fury 128 w/32meg, and my display depth is set at 16bit (just so you know).

SO anywho... i had no problems with it at all.

Mark...

[Duncan]

Yeah, that seems to be the consensus, all the
other folks who have checked it since found it
looked just fine.

So the score now stands at 3 to 5 on Windows and
3 for 3 on Mac, so I've gotta figure this is a
weird glitch that happens only on certain PCs,
and hope the vast majority of 'em don't have it.

Thanks alot for the help, much appreciated.

Duncan

[pknair]

Are the PCs you're using low on disk space and/or RAM? And does it have low net bandwidth? This usually only happens on machines who can't process the tween(s) as well as the anti-aliasing quick enough - Flash will drop the anti-aliasing for the animation every time. If you manage to optimize the movie a bit more, it might help...and on faster machines (ie-faster connections and more processing power) you won't see the problems at all. There are animations I did on my old P133 w/ 16MB RAM which looked like crap on that machine that look just gorgeous on my 550...


hth,
Deep (just a guy)

<pre><font face="courier" size="2">,-----------------------------.

| Pradeep Kumar Nair, B.Math |

| Graphic/Multimedia Designer |

| ICQ#: 39102360 |

| Medius Communications, Inc. |

| http://www.medius.com |

`-----------------------------'</font></pre>
Moderator - i/us Flash Forum

[pknair]

From CNet's Builder


hth,
Deep (just a guy)

<pre><font face="courier" size="2">,-----------------------------.

| Pradeep Kumar Nair, B.Math |

| Graphic/Multimedia Designer |

| ICQ#: 39102360 |

| Medius Communications, Inc. |

| http://www.medius.com |

`-----------------------------'</font></pre>
Moderator - i/us Flash Forum

[Duncan]

> Are the PCs you're using low on disk space and/or RAM?
> And does it have low net bandwidth?

I think you've nailed down the problem. In fact, I'm a bit
surprised and embarrassed I never thought of that.

(and I wonder why Macromedia's support guys never thought to
ask this either - I'm still on their 90 days of free support,
and wrote to them to ask about this. They couldn't see the
effect, and were totally stumped).

The machines that exhibited this problem were:

P133, 32MB RAM, Win95
P200, 128MB, Win98SE (Mine)
PII300, ???, Win95

(Dunno the RAM on the 300, but the owner had mentioned previously
that his RAM was ludicrously small for such a machine, and his HD
is nearly full).

All were on 28.8 connections.

I 'spect we can consider this particular mystery solved.

Thanks for the CNet reference - I was already familiar with most of
the info in the article, having previously combed thru MM's tech
articles on type (also Mook, Flashtek, Flashkit, and the other usual
suspects) - but I wasn't aware CNet had articles about Flash, and
am now happily rooting around in their archives to see what other
interesting Flash tips they've got. Always good to have yet another
source of info....

Thanks much for all the help.

Duncan