Flash Filmstrip Slideshow tasks

[alpinedigital]

This is probably the most complex idea for what I want to do, but its still quite simple. Im just going to present this idea in hopes to get some useable feedback to make life easier for me as I attempt it.

The idea is to have the animation one frame in size, as shown here:


I want the sprocket holes on the side to animate constantly in one direction so they will need to be seperated. That by itself is 'how to' by itself...

The image area would move up (or down) the screen much more slowly, sometimes changing direction to go backwards one frame. Acceleration would be nice, but I think that would affect the whole animation, perhaps negatively, but also might turn out really cool for the sprocket holes to change speed, who knows?

The actual images will not be constant. Some will be static, others will be zooming in or out, and fading in and out and transitioning from one to another as they animate behind the film frames.

So, a combination of any of these things would be a cool flash animation, but the overall complete idea would probably be one of the coolest image display/slideshow type flash animations I can think of, except for one that shows 1 and 1/2 frames tall. But I am 1st wondering how to cycle named objects as they go up the screen to start back at the bottom, which means I need them to be removed completely to reappear, or drop behind a solid black rectangle...

Im sure there is an easy way and a hard way, and probably several in between.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi alpinedigital,

Im sure there is an easy way and a hard way, and probably several in between.

No, there's no easy way! You're talking about a very complex animation, one which would be very difficult to achieve using Flash but even harder to do using the limited Flash functions of XXP. Firstly to simplify the animation as much as possible you'd need to create movieclips within the main movieclip. Something that XXP can't do.

Let's just look at the first scenario, having the sprocket holes move down. These would need to created within their own time line so they can loop separately from the main time line. The same with the rounded rectangular frame. (leave it static and it looks crap).

This animation occupies 2 frames (plus a background frame) now imagine trying to produce a serious animation that may cover 200 frames. XXP's Flash animation is excellent but it's very basic.

See attached files.

[alpinedigital]

well Im not ready to give up that easily!

My problem is I want to get the project underway without knowing for certain what all is possible, for instance:

I'd have a background which I will use to apply clipview because the shapes will need to slide up and off the edge. At this point, I figure two options, both of which are pretty difficult to keep track of:

Slide A moves off as Slide B moves on, then Slide C moves on as Slide B moves off, and at some point, Slide A needs to return to the starting point and move on as Slide C moves off. With this, I should be able to do this continuously until all images are used and I return with the 1st image again (and now that I think about it, Slide A would have to be at the start as well)

So two options: 'move Slide A behind Slide C (window and image) and sneak it right back underneath, or delete Slide A maybe for an instant, then replace it at the starting point 1 frame later.

Not sure if Xara could do either during an animation, and Im hoping I can apply clip view with several objects off the side. Im hoping THAT wont be an issue.

Yeah, this all sounds good in theory but as u said, no easy way, especially without testing. I'll do a simple 1 first, then add to its complexity as I become more familiar with the procedures

[alpinedigital]

Ha ha!! I totally figured out a few tricks to doing this. 1st, I decided to run a solid sprocket piece, twice as long so it moves twice as fast. Its also more than twice the length of the final size so Strip A is fully out of frame before Strip B passes by. At this point, I create a frame with no duration, and remove Strip A, create another frame with no duration, and place Strip A back at the starting point. This extended size and jump frames (I guess I'll call them) allowed for the animation to be much taller than I originally hoped for. And I must say, even before adding anything fancy, its already something to be proud of


http://stillnem.com/avrilfangz/images/film.xar is the full animation, before I applied the clipview.

[Egg Bramhill]

Very impressive alpinedigital, you've grasped XXP very quickly. However I'd like to comment it's visually not convincing. Why are the sprocket holes going up at twice the speed of the images? Not criticizing , just pointing out an anomaly.

[Egg Bramhill]

Here's what I'm thinking about. The sprockets move at the same speed as the frames. The alignment of frame1 and the final frame needs a bit more work but you can get the idea. Good fun, isn't it?

[alpinedigital]

Yes of course, the actual idea, (if we could all be spot on with every attempt,) was for the film strip to be moving so fast, as to approach actual playback speeds, but with slight varriances, so viewable frames would slide forward or back as if the speed was almost synchronized, but going a lil too fast, then a little too slow... Thats where the the idea of having images fade from one to another comes in, which would enhance that effect further with movie-like transitions, zooming and panning across the images.

As it sits now, the sproket holes moving out of sync, is just the beauty of chaos and complexity But this is just stage 1; - a wonderful learning excercise in cycling images past the viewable area. There's 12 images total that I need to work in from that Maxim photoshoot, so I figure double this animation and have 4 of the images fade from one to another, and at THAT point, rework the sprocket speed. I think having that synchonized to where they almost seem to stand still and change directions MAY be the effect that makes it more convincing. Also, that should be easiest to achieve by just tweaking the frame durations ever so slightly.

[alpinedigital]

Well first off, I noted recently that there's a HUGE tip that should be suggested to all newcomers to flash incase they didnt know: Be VERY cautious about any decision to continue work when previews have errors; Any copied element or frame with an error is just more errors that need to be fixed later. :P
That said, I report that my project is coming along nicely, but not without its glitches, and not without starting over a few times. Using the signature as a starting point, I retimed it to twice the speed and attempted to integrate the filmstrip. I had the sprocket holes nailed, even with the additional animations frames using twice the duration. However. he images didnt come work without stagger...
So starting over with a new approach, I reset the signature timing and recreated the filmstrip for the overlayed idea so I could zoom images underneath it. This worked great but the images pass by the viewable area too fast for the effort to be appreciated, and again - there was a stagger at the end which could not be eliminated without MANY additional frames. Also, the additional animation was completely frustrating to work with because of such short frame durations (.1s). The original signature stroke timing is I think .2s.
Finally, with 2 projects down in flames, I decided to go with the simplest method. That means tons of planning, and afterwards, recreating all the images and film strips so they sized up to the grid perfectly. This would eliminate all the guesswork. Im also going with synchronized sprocketholes like Egg Bramhill's animation. (Thats some very crisp work there, btw
So with everything perfect for the filmstrip, I ran thru setting them up in the frames in no time, only to find Xara staggers one image at the end. Trying to find the problem was a real chore because I had the the secondary animation images and shapes causing their own batch of errors, which is when I thought, its probably best to eliminate those variables right away before proceeding, which brought me back to starting over AGAIN.
Oh well, live and learn. If I run into problems this time, at least I should be able to fix things. The goal - The signature, followed by 5 images animating into view, and fading out, with two (smaller) filmstrips going in opposite directions on the right side. If those work out, I MIGHT take it a step further and have some of the filmstrip images transition to their alternates. It shouldnt be nearly as big a task since I've optimized every eliment to reduce frames from over 100 to about 1/2 as many LOL Also, with 2 strips, I can run thru all the images twice as fast.

- - Finally, only a few more glitches and a lot of wondering how to animate the finish, then decided to overlap the finish onto the beginning. Not too bad for a thorough test of Xtreme abilities.
http://stillnem.com/avrilfangz/images/AvrilFlash.xar

[Egg Bramhill]

Excellent work! I must admit that trying to create such a complicated swf within Xtreme would drive me up the wall. It would be far easier to create it in Flash (and I assume Swish) as they allow different movies, with their own time lines to play on the main timeline. So for example you'd have a movie called Signature. Another 2 called filmstrips and the final one called lavine_fade in. This makes editing far easier as you can change one without it effecting all the others.

[Scotty]

Hi,
Well done Alpinedigital! I think you done great job if it waas within Xara!!
Jim