animations

Print out string s₁ in the debugger output window. Ignored otherwise.

Note that action can considerably slow down your animation. You should only use is sporadically and remove it from final animations.

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.

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.

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:

DoAction
End
FrameLabel
PlaceObject
PlaceObject2
PlaceObject3
RemoveObject
RemoveObject2
ShowFrame
SoundStreamBlock
SoundStreamHead
SoundStreamHead2
StartSound

The data array of tags should always be terminated by an End tag though this can be inferred some players may not support a non-terminated list.

In order ...

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.)

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.)

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.

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.

Today (May 1st, 2008), the SWF format is available for free to all.

There was ...

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