Optimizing a Captivate Movie for Flash MX 2004
Being able to utilize the best of Captivate with the power of Flash MX 2004 is a very strong incentive to look for ways to make Captivate "play nice" with Flash. Here are some ideas:Keep the Captivate movie small. The fewer Captivate slides, the better. The end result is a shorter Flash timeline.Keep the Captivate slide duration to a minimum. Shorten the duration of mouse movements or other timeline objects. Remember, each extra second on the Captivate timeline adds 30 frames to the Flash movie.Consider adding buttons or other navigation elements in Flash rather than inserting them into the Captivate slide. These items are converted to movie clips, buttons, and bitmaps in Flash and add only to the "weight" of the final Flash movie.If the plan is to add an AVI video animation to the Captivate movie, consider using a more efficient FLV file in Flash. AVI movies are imported into Captivate as a series of slides.If you are using a background sound track to the Captivate movie, consider adding it to the Flash movie using the more efficient Flash Sound Object. This way the sounds are not embedded in the Flash timeline.If a Captivate movie is a self-running demonstration, don't add a controller to it.If Question slides are necessary, consider using the Quiz templates that are installed with Flash MX 2004 (Figure 10.16).
Figure 10.16. Knowing Quiz slides can't be imported into Flash, consider using one of the Quiz templates that are installed with Flash.
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These are just a few suggestions. You can also pare down the weight of your Captivate movie during the Import process. When the Captivate Options dialog box (Figure 10.17) opens during import, deselect the elements that aren't important to the movie.
Figure 10.17. Judicious deselection of various Captivate features during import will slim down the Captivate movie. You can always replace deselected itemsmore efficientlyin Flash.
