My Flash gif is slower in IE than in Firefox etc.

Seanie M

I've just done a 'movie' banner, set at 40 fps. In Firefox, it behaves perfectly, but in IE, it is very slow, and 'dirty' - the frame transition (the 'alpha' property) is noticeable because it is slow.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or am I missing something?

Seanie.

alan4cult

Do you have a link to the gif in question?

forbairt

This is a GIF ... or a flash animation ? (sorry for being a bit confused) as you're refering to FPS I'll assume flash animation though gif's have fps as well ... (I believe)

You don't have any spyware or anything installed with IE ? ...

Seanie M

Here is the gif (it is not on a live site, and is just a demo, so to speak):



The only anti-anything I have on my PC are AVG and Spybot.

Forbairt, it is an animated gif - the animated Flash would make it a swf file, right? I was told to get around the IE problem would be to export it as a swf instead, but I have to make the text's in question become objects - something I don't know much about (yet).

Any help or suggestions re appreciated.

Gordon

I've never outputted to a gif before. I reckon if you want to do a gif you should use a specific program for that instead like Adobe imageready. That gif is 50 or 200 slices in total so maybe that's why it's giving some problems.

Just output that as a .swf instead and it'll be a flash object (make sure to input it into your webpage accordingly). The text will be outputted properly, although you may need to check your output settings to output the font you are using iirc.

forbairt

Hmm.. did some checking ...

It would appear that if IE doesn't see a delay defined between each frame it causes the animation to run with a delay of .1 seconds between each frame ...

What software are you using .. and is that answer any help ?

James

EDIT: Link Added ...
This link might be of interest
http://homepages.tesco.net/~acg.gcs/tmp/test.html

EDIT EDIT:
Probably best to go with the Flash object ... file size should be way down ...
Think image you posted is 100kB ... crazy for what its actually doing ...

Flash animation to do the same would be 20 - 30 kB I'm guessing...

EDIT EDIT EDIT:
EPILEPSY WARNING for the link I posted contains Strobe Lighting

AlbertH

I did a quick check on the gif and it redraws the whole frame every time.
With a proper animated gif program you can set it to replace only a small part of the previous frame. In effect make an element a little bit bigger than the moving word and reposition it so that it covers the old word.

This will have a big effect on the size of the animated gif as each frame will be a smaller size and it should reduce the overall file from its current 112k which in my opinion is way to big for an graphic.

Albert.

Seanie M

Thanks for the input guys. I agree it is too big, but I wanted to find out the IE issue, while tackling the size one at the same time.

I have already exported it as a swf, but no fade in/out occurs, and also it makes the text very jagged. To overcome both these obstacles, I need to make the texts as objects, which I don't quite know how to do yet. What I think I'll do there is make text buttons (in e.g. Xara Webstyle), and import them to the library. I'll experiement that way and report back here later.

I used Flash 8 Pro to make this.

forbairt

Seanie M wrote:

I need to make the texts as objects, which I don't quite know how to do yet.

I used Flash 8 Pro to make this.

EEK!...

ok .. type in your text ...
right click on the text ...
convert to symbol ... convert it to a graphic

40 Frames down the link insert a keyframe ... (right click ... insert keyframe)

Click on this keyframe ... and move the graphic to where you want it to end up

right click on your first frame ... "Create Motion Tween" ...
In the first frame ... click the text graphic ... you should see color in your properties window ... change none to alpha ... set you alpha to 0


you'll end up with something like this ...
http://www.forbairt.com/seanie/websites.html

SWF file size ... 5kB ...

Seanie M

Yep, that worked (the making text objects bit in Xara and importing them)! And the same swf is only 11KB in size, with no compromise on speed and image quality. I've just taught myself new tricks! (and I'm not that old a dog!)

Thanks for the help guys!

Seanie.

P.S. Forbairt, your (suggested) way above, on a second attempt, also works fine!