Made to Order Software Corporation - animations

Trace

Alexis Wilke — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:37:08 +0000

SWF Action

Action Category:

Miscellaneous

Action Details:

Action Identifier:

Action Structure:

<n.a.>

Action Length:

0 byte(s)

Action Stack:

pop 1 (s)

Action Operation:

s₁ := pop();
trace(s₁);

Action Flash Version:

DefineSceneAndFrameData

Alexis Wilke — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:06:12 +0000

Tag Info

Tag Number:

Tag Type:

Define

Tag Flash Version:

Tag Structure:

struct swf_definesceneandframedata {
	swf_tag				f_tag;		/* 86 */
	unsigned char			f_data[tag size];
};

This tag is used to define some raw data for a scene and frame. It is often used to include XML files in Flash animations.

f_data is an array of bytes.

DefineVideoStream

Alexis Wilke — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:39:42 +0000

Tag Info

Tag Number:

Tag Type:

Define

Tag Flash Version:

Tag Structure:

struct swf_definevideostream {
	swf_tag			f_tag;		/* 60 */
	unsigned short		f_video_id;
	unsigned short		f_frame_count;
	unsigned short		f_width;	/* WARNING: this is in pixels */
	unsigned short		f_height;
	unsigned char		f_reserved : 5;
	unsigned char		f_deblocking : 2;
	unsigned char		f_smoothing : 1;
	unsigned char		f_codec;
};

This tag defines a video stream. To playback the video stream, one needs to add a list of VideoFrame tags.

The f_width and f_height are defined in pixels. This is rather uncommon in SWF so it is to be noted multiple times.

DefineSprite

Alexis Wilke — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:28:19 +0000

Tag Info

Tag Number:

Tag Type:

Define

Tag Flash Version:

Tag Structure:

struct swf_definesprite {
	swf_tag			f_tag;		/* 39 */
	unsigned short		f_sprite_id;
	unsigned short		f_frame_count;
	...			<data>;
	swf_tag			f_end;
};

A sprite is a set of SWF tags defining an animated object which can then be used as a simple object. A sprite cannot contain another sprite. hHowever, you can use PlaceObject2 to place a sprite in another.

The following are the tags accepted in a Sprite:

SWF Actions

Alexis Wilke — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 06:02:03 +0000

The pages defined below include all the actions defined in Flash.

Different actions are supported in different version, so please, look at the version when attempting to use that action.

Some actions have been deprecated and should not be used in newer version of Flash (mainly the untyped operators.)

There are two schemes supported in Flash 9 and over: ActionScript 2 and 3 (also referenced as AS2 and AS3.)

FreeAll

Alexis Wilke — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:28:42 +0000

Tag Info

Tag Number:

Tag Type:

Define

Tag Flash Version:

Tag Structure:

Unknown

This is an interesting concept: have a tag that can clear everything that we have done so far and start over. If you have a single time line, this is certainly useful. Since version 3, however, we get the DefineSprite tag that has a very similar capability (except that it does not have the ability to delete anything from memory, this comes in version 5 with access to external animations that can be created and thrown away dynamically.)

SyncFrame

Alexis Wilke — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:23:26 +0000

Tag Info

Tag Number:

Tag Type:

Display

Tag Flash Version:

Tag Structure:

Unknown

Apparently, Macromedia thought that synchronizing their animation with, probably, the VLB would be a good idea. Yet they dropped it and never released that out. It is probably not useful for animations (visual) to be properly synchronize when there is not audio. If you do have audio, you should synchronize the animation to the audio and drop visual frames as required to keep up with the audio.

About SWF

Alexis Wilke — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:53:32 +0000

Brief History

At the very beginning, a company created the SWF format to generate small vector animations on the Internet called Shockwave Flash (hence the name of the format, SWF.) It also included images. This company was bought by Macromedia around 1997 (if I recall properly). This is when Flash v3 was created. Since then, Macromedia created a new version about once a year up to version 8. At that time (in 2005/2006), Macromedia sealed a deal with Adobe which wanted to use the SWF format in their PDF files.

Adobe Flash Animation by Made to Order Software

Alexis Wilke — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:41:07 +0000

Making a great thing even better!


		SSWF Support

Using our robust open-source C++ library and scripting language, ScriptSWF (SSWF), you can create Adobe Flash animations on the fly.

Since it's initial release in 2002, SSWF has been extremely popular. Despite never being advertised, it has been downloaded more than 77,250 times just on SourceForge.net, has been converted to work on several Unix platforms not initially

Made to Order Software plans to ease the creation of Adobe Flash animation software such as Flash players and other Flash tools

Alexis Wilke — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0000

Made to Order Software has started work on a new version of its SSWF multimedia library, an Open Source C/C++ library used to create professional Adobe Flash animation software. It already allowed thousands to create Flash animations. The library will soon allow our users to also load Flash files, which opens the door to creating Flash players and other Flash tools without the need to handle all the details of the complex Flash file format.