Transparency in Flash Animations

[KeithFurman]

Is there any way to do a transparent Flash animation on the slides?
- Can't do Flash .SWF because HTML code is needed to make .SWF transparent
- Can't do .FLV because .FLVs have to be embedded in a .SWF
- Can't do animated Gif because Presenter doesn't support animated gifs

I'm trying to add looped animations developed in 3Ds Max to draw attention to bulleted text. I want to move it around using PPT animation.

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

FYI using Office 07 and Adobe Presenter does support animated GIFs.

Or you could just use PPT animations.

Jorma@RealEyes

[KeithFurman]

That's great to know -- I'll check it out -- getting an Office 07 setup next week. So Adobe Presenter 6 DOES work work in Office 07 -- I could not tell from Adobe's site and was assuming that it did not or was not supported?

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Presenter 6 DOES work with PPT 07 but you must still save your PPT files as a .PPT not a .PPTX!

That support should come from Presenter 7 due out in a few months.

Jorma@RealEyes

[Guest]

You can make a transparent Flash animation work in Breeze, at least I've been able to do with with Breeze 5 and Flash MX2004. The key is to make the stage as small as possible. The stage cannot be transparent, but anything outside of the stage will be rendered with a transparent background.

Resizing the stage to be really small can make the file awkward to place on the slide because you won't be able to see anything other than the stage when it's imported. In fact, if the stage is too small it may only appear as a speck on the screen and you may not even notice it's there. it will be visible after it's been published to Breeze and the background will be transparent.

[Chispas]

The small stage tactic only works for me sometimes. It is really hit or miss. I am using Flash 8 and Presenter 6.2.

[KeithFurman]

I've been meaning to get back to supermercadogato. The small stage tactic worked for me -- excellent work-around! Thank you!!! I'll report if I have issues like Chispas. I'm using Flash 8 (required for On2 video, i.e., from imported QT animation codec .mov with millions of colors+) and Presenter 6.1 and Office 2007.

Transparent animated Gifs also worked (thank you Jorma@RealEyes) but the edges are better with the SWT file & should be able to include audio. But Gifs have the advantage of easy placement and PPT preview and work nicely if the background is the same color as the edge aliasing.

[Guest]

That was a very slick idea indeed!

One other thing you can try (as a matter of overcoming the small stage problem and it's placement on a slide) is to run the PPT deck in show mode. What that should do is put the swf into action, and then, if you cancel the ppt show, go back to the ppt editing environment, you should be able to see your flash content as a "preview" which could help in terms of placing the .swf more appropriately on the slide.

Rob

[catholicon]

Just a note, Presenter 7 supports importing videos on the slides.

[KeithFurman]

Thanks. Looking forward to seeing that built-in capability in action and see how it does importing .mov & other formats.

You can insert video in v. 6x if the FLV is properly embedded in a SWF file. But transparency & alpha channels is the issue.