*Please note that this brief tutorial is based on my own, personal experience with Flash CS4. If you have any questions or comments, write them below this post.
UPDATE: Before reading on, please make sure that you have upgraded your Flash version with the latest hotfix: http://bit.ly/iiXm0.
As I looked across the web, I realized there weren’t any real good tutorials on how to export linear, Flash-based animations in quicktime – and properly – for Flash CS4. So, after a lot of rummaging and trial-and-error, I came up with the “correct” settings.
File > Export > Export Movie… > Save > Quicktime Settings
Under “Video”
Compression: Animation
Depth: Millions of Colors+
Quality: Best
Frame rate: current
Key frame rate: (whatever your frame rate is)
Dimensions: current
These settings will help you render out video that will be easily editable in other video-editing and compositing apps (i.e. After Effects, Final Cut Pro, etc.). One thing to look out for though (if you are still experiencing slow or choppy renders) is the use of filters.
In my experience with Flash CS4, if you use more than one filter on a movieclip, quicktime will almost break itself and produce a video twice in length, with a slower framerate. For now, though, use the above settings for best output when dealing with linear-based Flash animations.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
hi I bumped into your blog searching for some help precisely on the FlashCS4 Quicktime export topic.
I dont' know why, but when it exports, Flash CS4 seems to override my QT settings. It says 768×576 and 25 fps, but the exported QT movie is always a different frame rate, and is 640×480.
Although I change the settings in the Quick Time Settings button, Flash just seems to ignore them.
Have you ever come across this? I have been making movies from Flash for years, it's the first time I find something like this…
Thank you in advance for reading this. Cheers! – Josh
hi Josh – I've had a lot of annoying issues with Flash CS4, myself, since it came out. It's hard to diagnose your problem from a mere message so, if you want, you can send me your file and I can try to see if it comes up with the same issues on my computer? More often than not, my troubleshooting simply involves trial and error with the settings. Once I find the solution, I store it in my memory forever!
The only thing I can think of, for this particular problem, is that, maybe, your settings under (when exporting) "Quicktime Settings > (Video) Size" is different from your stage dimensions…
Hi,
I have experienced many problems with Flash to QT with the above settings –extreme artifacting. I then have to reduce the colors and sometimes the quality and even then it doesn't always work. I found the qt export got worse with Cs3 and quite er crappy with CS4. Any suggestions?
Pam
Hi Pam, this is one of the reasons why I've made the switch to Toon Boom Animate for my most recent work. When it comes to animation, I think Adobe has gone backwards with CS4; the focus is more on web developers these days.
However, in regards to the artifacts, have you tried rendering your file on a different computer? If you'd like, I can test it for you on mine (you can use http://yousendit.com, for uploading and privacy, and then send me an email).
Hi, I was having exporting problems with Flash CS3 on my old laptop, quicktimes always came out with missing frames or the audio was out of synch or the frames would just stick etc…I have now purchased a new macbook pro and CS4 and am getting the same problems, and changing the settings doesn't seem to make much difference. Can you help?
BTW, it is just simple hand-drawn line animation, exporting quicktimes with the settings the same as you have above, composition size 1024×576
If you'd like, you can send me your animation to email.me@siosism.com, and I can test it out for you on my Mac Pro. If I find a solution, I'll post it here. (The reason I suggest this is because every person's case is different, but they are most often a result of differing hardware specs.)
Also, have you updated Flash with the latest hotfix? http://bit.ly/iiXm0
Thanks,
I haven't updated the latest hotfix yet, just doing it now…will see if it helps at all.
Also, I noticed that after exporting a Quicktime movie from Flash and then uploading it to you tube it seems to play fine on you tube, but it still has a few glitches when i play it using quicktime player on my laptop.
If the problem persists i'll upload the file for you to have a look at.
Thanks for your help on this matter, much appreciated.
No worries! Best of luck
Having major issues with exporting flash into mov file. The file is crazy large and my mac which is 300g, runs out of space before it's finished. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Could you please give me some more specifics about your flash file (resolution, fps, settings, etc.)?
I tried exporting my Flash animation to a Quicktime file using your settings, and nothing happened. After I clicked export, nothing came up, so I assumed that the exporting was extremely fast and went to the folder that I chose to export it to, and it wasn't there. I tried exporting it to AVI, and it worked, but the file size was unbelievably enormous: 4GB. The file size of the Flash document itself was only 16,879KB. Additionally the quality of the exported movie was terrible. I've tried all of the export file formats, but none of them work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Well, when you export any sort of animation uncompressed, the file size is usually going to be large (sometimes as large as 4GB but not usually). If you’re still having trouble, try exporting your animation as image files, and then stitching them back together using Quicktime Player (you can Google this if you don’t know how to do it). It’s a relatively lengthy process, and I only recommend it as a last resort, but it works.
It’s a shame that so many people are still experiencing these problems! Best of luck.
I've experienced the same problem as these folks. I'm convinced that there is no real solution. Even exporting as an image sequence does not work. It makes no sense that the quicktime exporter tries to "record" at real time. It makes me mad every time I watch it try to work. I have no problem with file size, or compression, or image quality, just that it basically records the first and last frame of my movie and that's it.
Hi Matthew, sorry for the late reply. I'm equally as sorry that none of the above helped you with this quicktime problem. Were you able to find a solution in the end?