Digital Graphics & Animation

Digital Graphics & Animation Publishing An Animation Lesson 3

Objective • Analyze an animation movie • Optimize a movie • Publish a movie for web delivery • Publish a movie to an animated or static graphic format • Publish a movie to an executable • Publish a movie to QuickTime.

Overview • You learned previously how to create and enhance animations. • You will now learn how to prepare your animation for delivery. • In this lesson, you will earn the basic concepts for preparing your animation for publication • You will learn about analyzing, optimizing, and publishing a movie.

Overview • As you prepare your animation, remember the following factors that may influence your decision on how to deliver or distribute your animation. • File size • Content of the movie • User’s connection speed or bandwidth • User’s hardware and software ( that is RAM, processor, browser) • Network traffic ( if you work in a networked environment) • Steaming capabilities, which involve connection speed and file size

Analyze a Movie File • What happens if you test your movie and it takes a long time to download and playback? How do you figure out the causes of the delays during download and playback? • You do an analysis! • The goal of an analysis is to identify potential problems while downloading and playing a movie.

Analyze a Movie File • If you plan to download the entire movie before you play it, analysis can help you determine what parts of the movie are taking the most time to download. • If you plan on delivering a movie through streaming connection (playing it while downloading), your analysis should help reduce or control the pauses during downloading and playback.

Analyze a Movie File • Three key terms related to analyzing movie files are bandwidth or connection speed, playback rate, and streaming rate. • The bandwidth or connection speed is the speed at which a network or modem transfers data. • This speed varies depending on a computer’ s network connection or modem, so you must try to anticipate the users who will view your animation and the network connections they may have.

Analyze a Movie File • The playback rate is how quickly the computer plays the frames of the movie. • This is the frames per second (fps) rate that you set for in animation lesson 1. • The streaming rate is how quickly the network or modem can download frames of the movie. • Streaming rate depends on two factors: • The connection speed • The content of the movie

Analyze a Movie File • Obviously, a faster network connection can download frames of the movie faster. • For a fixed connection speed, the streaming rate can still be different for different movies depending on their content: a simple movie downloads faster than a complicated one. • One of the key ideas in analyzing an animation is that not only does the entire animation file have a particular size, but each frame within the animation contains a different amount of data and has its own size.

Analyze a Movie File • Each frame stores the information necessary to draw that frame, including any new images, new shapes, new text, or tweening information. • Keyframes usually contain more data than frames that are tweened. So, the streaming rate can vary even within an animation. • Most animation programs have options to analyze your movie. For example, in Macromedia Flash MX you can use the bandwidth Profiler and show streaming options.

Generate a Size Report and Use the Bandwidth Profiler • Knowing the total file size of an animation can help you determine how quickly it will download and play. • You can use a size report to prepare a printout that shows the size of each frame in an animation, as well as, running total file size for the entire animation. • To generate a size report, select option in a dialog box that allows you to customize the export or publishing process.

Generate a Size Report and Use the Bandwidth Profiler • For example, use the export Movie or Publish settings command on the file menu. • The size report may consist of a text file that contains the size information. • You can open this report using a simple text editor such as Windows Notepad. • Use a feature such as Flash’s bandwidth Profiler for a visual representation of how much data each frame of animation contains. • You can usually set a specific modem or connection speed that is represented on the graph as a horizontal red line called a bandwidth target. • Each frame appears as a bar, similar to a bar graph.

Generate a Size Report and Use the Bandwidth Profiler • To check the bandwidth profile of an animation, you may need to test the movie as you have done in previous lessons. • In the testing window, choose the feature from the appropriate menu. • For example, click bandwidth profiler on the view window. • You may also need to click a command such as Frame by Frame graph to see information on each frame of the animation.

Check Playback & Streaming Rate • In animation files, a sin other movie files, you need to be aware of the bandwidth and the size of individual frames because of the way they effect playback. • When you playback your file, the playback speed of the first frame cannot exceed the downloading speed of the second frame, or you experience pauses in the playing of the movie. • If the playback ever catches up with the streaming, the movie pauses. Pauses are generally not desirable.

Check Playback & Streaming Rate • Your animation program may offer a feature that enables you to test how the animation streams and plays. • Macromedia Flash, for example, you use the show streaming command in the testing window. Click show streaming on the view menus and display a green bar across the top of the Bandwidth profiler. • The progress of the green bar shows the streaming rate, and a playhead indicator shows the playback rate.

Check Playback & Streaming Rate • You can select a connection speed on the Debug menus to see how streaming and playback relate at a faster or slower modem speed. • This helps you determine how the movie looks to viewers who are using a variety of connection speeds. • It is a good idea to test animation at a number of different speeds to make sure it can be easily viewed on a broad range of computers.

Optimize a Movie • You may finish an analysis of a movie and may identify some large frames that are causing problems. • You can optimize the file to improve the preferences of your movie. • The purpose is to reduce the file size of your movie and make it faster to download and smoother during playback.

Optimize a Movie • The first things you should check when optimizing your file or a particular frame of the file are the kinds of data being loaded. • Image files and sound files can be major problems because of their large file sizes. • Compression is another way to reduce the space required to store data file size by efficiently encoding the content. • Text, shapes, sound, and images can all be compressed. When you compress text and shapes, no information is lost, so the quality remains the same.

Publish a Movie • After you analyze and optimize your movie so it performs better in the medium in which it will be published. Now you are ready to publish your movie. • The first step is to decide how you want to publish or distribute your animation. There are "our ways of distributing your animation: • As part of a Web page • In a standard graphic format (such as JPG, PNG, or GIF) • As an executable file, which bundles both the animation and the program to play it in a single file. • As a QuickTime movie

Publish a Movie • All these formats can be delivered over the Internet or on a CD-ROM. • When you distribute a graphic or an executable over the Internet, the entire file must be downloaded before you can play the animation. • For animations distributed as part of a Web page or as QuickTime movies, you don't have to wait for the entire file to download before you start playing it. • While you're watching what's already downloaded, your Web browser or QuickTime player can continue to download the rest of the file.

Publish a Movie • No matter which method of distribution you choose, you begin the publishing process the same way. • Choose the command that opens a publishing settings dialog box. • In Flash MX, for example, click Publish settings on the File menu to open the Publish Settings dialog box. • This dialog box consists of at least one tab (Formats) that displays a list of check boxes for the different formats for publishing an animation. • As you select a format, Flash MX adds a tab to the dialog box for that format. Click the tab to customize the settings for publishing to that format.

Publish a Movie • After you have selected the settings you want, click a Publish button to publish the animation and then close the dialog box. • You may not see any result of this process, and your original animation remains on your screen. • Your file may be published in the same folder that contains your current animation. • Use a file management program such as Windows Explorer or My Computer to navigate to the published files. You can open your published files in other programs or in your Web browser.

Publish a Movie for Web Delivery • Oneof the most common ways to distribute an animation is over the Web. Remember, file-size is an issue if you are preparing an animation for the Web because you want to minimize downloading time. • Most animation programs have their own formats for their files. A user must have a player specifically for those kinds of files to play the animations. • Most animation programs distribute their players free of charge over the Internet or on the CD-ROM that contains the program.

Publish a Movie for Web Delivery • These players come in two flavors: standalone programs and browser plug-ins. • A standalone player is a separate program that can play an animation. Such as Flash Player can be installed on any computer to play animations without requiring a Web browser or access to the Internet. • A browser plug-in is a program component that loads into a Web Browser program. It takes on the job of playing an animation on a Web page when a user requests it. • When you publish an animation for Web delivery, the published animation file can be played from a Web page using the browser's plug-in or downloaded from the Web to your hard drive where you can play it by using a standalone player. • You can also store the animation on a CD-ROM for distribution to another system or network

Publish a Movie to Animated or Static Graphics • You may want to publish an animation to a graphic format for a number of reasons inducing to create an illustration of your animation in a newsletter or brochure or to add both an animated and a static graphic file to a Web page. • Besides using a published graphic on a Web page you can store the image on a disk or CD-ROM for easy transport, or you can use the graphic in other programs such as a word processing, graphics, or presentation program. • You have three file options when publishing to graphics: GIF, JPEG, and PNG.

Publish a Movie to Animated or Static Graphics • GIF means Graphics Interchange Format. The GIF graphic format is the only one that supports both animated and static image sequences that is limited to 256 colors. GIFs are a good choice for simple images or animation sequences. The GIFformat compresses images without losing quality, and are bitmap imagesthat can be very large, for storing images. You do not need a plug-in to play an animated GIF. • A bitmap image is represented by storing a value for each dot (pixel) in the image ( as opposed to those made up of separate shapes). • JPEG (.jpg) stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is a good format to use for photographs. This file type can be compressed, so you can trade off between image quality and file size. JPEG is a static graphic format that does not support transparency. • PNG stands for Portable Network Graphic. is a recently developed format intended to replace the GIF format for lossless compression (compressing an image without losing quality). Unlike GIF, it isn't limited to 256 colors. But it doesn't support animated image sequences.

Publish a Movie to Animated or Static Graphics • When you publish to a static graphic format in some animation programs, you capture the first frame of the animation only. • When you publish an animated GIF, you can choose what frames from the animation to store in the GIF, if desired, or display all of them.

Publish an Animated GIF File • The process of publishing an animated GIF file follows the basic steps of publishing any animation. • Open the Publish Settings dialog box and click the GIF option on the Formats tab On the GIF tab, make sure to select the animated option button. • You can then choose whether to loop the animation or play it a specified number of times. • Use the Optimize Colors option to allow Flash MX to handle colors for best results.

Publish a Static JPEG File • You may want to capture a static graphic of one of your animation files to include in the next edition of your school newspaper or a class paper. • Again, this image can be inserted on a Web page, stored on a CD-ROM, or placed or imported into another program.

Publish a Movie to an Executable • Suppose you are traveling to a conference to make a presentation. You are not sure what type of software and hardware will be available at the conference. Maybe you want to share your animation with a friend who lives across town, in another state, or in another country but doesn‘t have animation software or a standalone player installed on his or her computer. • You can create an executable which is a programfile that can be run on a computer without a standalone player or the animation software installed. You can burn this executable version to a CD or DVD and distribute it. • The executable format is useful when you don't know whether your intended audience has a player for your animation program.

Publish a Movie to an Executable • The executable bundles together your data and a player so your animation can be played without using any other program. • Because adding all code for theplayer makes the file much larger, publishing an executable also is a useful option if the size of the animation already makes it difficult for Web delivery. • Optimization is generally not as critical if you publish to an executable, but there are certain limitations. Standard audio CD-ROMs are typically 650 MB, so you are limited to that total file size if you are distributing your animation on a CD.

Publish a Movie to Quick Time • QuickTime is a cross-platform format that works on both Windows and Apple Macintosh systems. One of the two most common formats along with AVI • It is actually a wrapper for a whole range movie and animation technologies, even interactive ones. • Publishing your animation to a QuickTime movie means it can be played on a wide range of systems without needing a player for your specific animation program. Unlike publishingto an executable, no code has to be bundled with your animation, so the file is smaller and can run on any platform supporting QuickTime.

Publish a Movie to Quick Time • QuickTime movies can also be imported into video-editing programs. Your users may want add animation to their QuickTime movies, and then use the added animation in a digital video they are developing. • You can distribute your QuickTime movie via the Web, on a CD-ROM, or on videotape. QuickTime movies can be downloaded and then played, or they can be streamed. • Some versions of Flash handle QuickTime differently from others. You may need to save Flash MX animation to a previous version of Flash to satisfactorily publish to QuickTime. • You may want to check the documentation of your own animation program to see what versions of QuickTime it supports.

Vocabulary • Bandwidth • Bitmap images • Compression • Executable • GIF • JPEG • Playback rate • Plug-in • PNG • Quick time • Standalone Player • Streaming • Streaming rate

True or False • An entire animation must be downloaded to the user's computer before it starts J\\ playing. • Streaming data speeds up downloading a movie. • Every frame of an animation plays at the same speed. • Every frame of an animation downloads at the same speed. • Optimizing a movie can make playback smoother.

True or False • Users require special software to play an animation in a Web Browser? • Publishing to an executable allows a user to play your animation without special software? • Executable animations can play on multiple platforms? • QuickTime movies require FlashMX? • Animations distributed on CD ROM don’t need to be optimized?

Fill in the Blank • Watching the first part of an animation while the rest is downloading is called _____ • _____ is the process of improving the download and playback of your movies. • _____ is a cross platform multimedia format. • If you’re not sure what software your user has, you might consider distributing your animation in _____ form. • Images and sounds can be compressed more if you are willing to give up _____

Multiple Choice • Publishing a static graphic in Macromedia Flash MX captures • The first frame of the animation • The last frame of the animation • Whatever frame of the animation you choose • All frames of the animation • In order to avoid pauses, the streaming rate must be • Slower than the playback rate • Faster than the playback rate • The same as the playback rate • The two are unrelated

Multiple Choice • Animations can be played in a Web Browser using a(n) • Standalone player • Plug-in • Executable • JPEG Image • Which of the following image formats allow animation • GIF. • JPEG. • PNG. • All of the above

Multiple Choice • Which of the following can best help you optimize your animation for publication? • Changing the playback rate • Using HTML • Changing your compression setting for text and shapes • Changing your compression settings for images and sound

Project Assignment Flash Lessons 1- 16

Digital Graphics & Animation