Using Embedded Video in Flash MX

Mark from www.cfaith.com asks "We have a 8 minute video clip which is 120 mb in size. I would like to use it as a cover page by converting it into a Flash MX Pro clip. What do I need to be able to do that? "

For this Flash Tutorial we firstly need the video clip. Video files of type .mov(Quicktime) , AVI , and .mpg(mpeg) can be imported into Flash MX Pro.

Open Flash MX Pro and go File - Import.

Select your video and a box will open up. Select "Embed video in Macromedia Flash Document" for this tutorial.

Choose your settings for quality. Less quality means smaller size but reduced picture quality. You may have to juggle this to suit your needs.
Choose the width and height of the Flash video by moving the Scale slider.
Synchronise your flash video to the flash framerate and add audio if you have it.

You may get a message that says your timeline is not long enough. Choose yes.

Add another layer to your timeline and click on its last frame and hit key F6 to make a keyframe.
Open the Actions window (F9) and insert this code to stop at this frame:

	Stop();

Make a button on this layer and frame and hit F8 to convert the button to a symbol. Call it restartBtn.

Make sure this button is selected and in your actions window write the following code to make the timeline go back to frame 1 and replay the video.

  
	on(release) {
		_root.gotoAndPlay(1);
	}
 
 

Make another button and call it "ContinueBtn" and put it in the same layer and frame as the restart button.
Click on it and insert this code in it to link to the next webpage that you want (e.g. nextpage.htm):

	on(release) {
		getUrl("nextpage.htm", "_self");
	}

Select File - Publish Settings from the menu.

Tick Flash , HTML and GIF boxes in the Formats tab.

In the Flash tab , select version - Flash 6 , and choose your desired jpeg quality.
In the HTML tab, select "Detect for Flash 6" in the Template field and leave the other settings as default.

Leave the GIF tab settings at their defaults.

Then click the "Publish" button and all your dreams will come true.

You should have 3 files that you will need to upload. If you called your Flash file video.fla, you will have a video.html , a video.swf and a video.gif file. Rename video.html to index.html and upload index.html, video.swf and video.gif to your web server and put them in the same directory as nextpage.htm (sic)

That's about it for embedded videos, if you want to link a video, then have a look at the Flash Help docs. Ciao.