Christmas animation won't run when exporting to avi- please help!

**yellowbird** · 20 December 2020, 11:39 PM

Me with animation problems again. I have designer pro x 17.1.0.60742, My animation previews perfectly in xara, if you have a version less than pro x 17 it will most likely error. In the past I have exported the animation to AVI uncompressed. Then I used windows 10 photos to create a new video project to pull it in and create an mp4. I'm sure my problem is it is too big. It will create the avi without error, but windows can't play it, and win 10 photos video project won't import it. I tried changing the starting image and text that appear on every frame to background, and removing them from eacch frame, but export to avi won't show the background. If I delete all the frames up to frame 12 and and change the display time to up to 3 seconds on that frame, it will export and play. Change the frame to 4 seconds and export - won't play. I only have 3 export options, uncompressed avi, windows video 1, which windows photo will accept but just display black, and an intel codec. I'm guessing I need additional codec, or purchase a video editing software. Suggestions? .xar is attached - Thanks!

**gwpriester** · 21 December 2020, 12:49 AM

I have moved this to Web Design Chat. Check back. I am sure someone will have a good suggestion.

**yellowbird** · 21 December 2020, 01:58 AM

Hi Gary. I don't want to put it on the web page - I want to make a video I can upload to facebook. Thanks!

**wizard509** · 21 December 2020, 03:41 AM

I have spent some time trying to figure out your problem and there sure is a problem but so far I haven't solved it unless someone else solves it before I do I'll keep at it,

**wizard509** · 21 December 2020, 04:46 AM

This is what I found so far

i. Looks like an Swf but seems to play just fine as a gif
2. Several errors when attempting to export animation wants to export as SWF
3. Image may be too large because I need to scroll to see the entire animation.
4. Did you try to mix animation styles?
5.SWF animation elements need to be named but gif's do not.

**wizard509** · 21 December 2020, 04:51 AM

Maybe you should rebuild the animation.

**wizard509** · 21 December 2020, 05:40 AM

THIS IS MORE OF WHAT I TURNED UP

FLASH
Frame 2: Feathering cannot be exported

TWEEN
Frame 15 Unpaired photo grinch.png named "Grinch"
Frame 34 Can't tween shadow named "cbs logo": Shadow style or scale change.
Frame 34 Frame URL "1" of shadow is invalid: frame does not exist

**Chris M** · 21 December 2020, 05:45 AM

I exported as AVI, which, as you stated, does export, but it weighs in at 5.2GB. Unless you have an embedded 4K movie that's an hour+ in length, I'd say there's something not quite right!

Throwing the AVI into a converter has the program (iSkySoft) hang at 100% import.

Exporting as (the now defunct) SWF throws errors on frames 35 and 34 and complains about feathering on frame 1. Then it fails.

I think Larry has the right idea...curse, sob quietly, blame the nearest person to you and then start again.

**yellowbird** · 21 December 2020, 05:58 AM

A gif doesn't do the nice transistions and has color limitations. The errors on the swf wouldn't be hard to fix, the shadowed or feathered graphics could be exported as jpg or png and put in place of what is there, but how do I get a swf converted to mp4? (I don't know size limitation on xara's animation. I get it to work and preview and think i't great, then run into this.) There has to be a way to get it to work or xara should not allow me to create such an animation and preview it. Thanks.

**Chris M** · 21 December 2020, 06:39 AM

I reduced the size of the frames to 640 x 523 and exported as AVI. This came in at 1.5GB. I then popped it into the converter, kept the same ratio and converted to MP4. The result was 19.7MB and plays fine in Edge and FireFox.

I removed the fly-in animation for convenience and i notice the last frame isn't quite lined up correctly. I'll upload a live version so you can see shortly.