Tools
Flash Optimizer 2: The only SWF compressor by Gábor Csomák
First I was skeptical when I saw the Flash Optimizers advertisement. Can a SWF be half the size without quality loss? After testing Eltima Software's product for two weeks, I have to say: It is an excellent tool, a 'must-have' for a Flash developer, but let me warn you, you will not get your SWF's cut in half. Usually, I could trim them 10-20%, without visible difference and I think that is the reason why users will like it. The program will have a difficult task of making Flash CS4's publishing technique more efficient. My opinion is that Flash CS4 has a great method, since, for example, it does not include unused objects in the SWF, etc.. So, let us start the adventure and find out where can we save so many megabytes? Flash Optimizer can compress and optimize your: • Images – With Flash Optimizer you can convert all images to JPEG format, and compress them to a given quality level and you can also delete the meta data. • Sounds and Video – With this tool you can change the bit rate, frequency of the sounds and videos, you can convert sounds to mono, you can optimize their
streaming and all sounds will be converted to mp3. • Shapes and Morphs – It is ideal for deleting unnecessary points, invisible parts of shapes and you can compress and delete shapes and morphs, as well. Also, you can delete zero objects, which are not needed. Fonts – If the movie only contains 8 pixel high letters, then why would you include the whole fonts with larger sized letters in it? Play with the sliders Although the program has five presets , you can set and save as many as you want, but you will usually need to make changes for each SWF that you run the program on. All SWF's are different, so you have to play with the compression options to get the best result, but it is worth trying it. In 5 minutes you can optimize your SWF to be smaller and faster. All of the above mentioned can be selected and deselected and most of the options strength can be modified using a percent slider. So if you want to decompress only the sounds in your file you will only select the sound compression and set its properties (such as
bit rate, frequency, etc.). Flash Optimizer will do just that and leave the other parts untouched. You have lots of freedom to play with your SWF file's compression to find the best quality/size rate. As I have mentioned before, there are five preset options, which are recommended to start optimizing from and you can save your own presets with one click. You can also preview before saving and look at the original version and the compressed one at the same time or only at the compressed one, but on larger screen or even full screen. You will see a detailed, colorful info graph about the compression, so you will know what took up the space. The program also has a batch conversion mode. I think it is nice to have, but in my opinion, there is no real need to use it. It works fine, but who wants to compress SWF's at the same time with the same preferences? The only batch conversion I found useful was if you have some old Flash Player 6-8 SWF's, you can compress all of them with Zlib and they will be saved as Flash Player 9 movies. Great for banners and FlashLite I think the real strength of the program is in banners and FlashLite: both banners and
Figure 2. Optimization set
Figure 1 . Reduce swf file size
03/2008 (5)
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