Flash CS3 and Filter problem

Question

Ok. So I have a file that was originally created with Flash
8. The file was opened in Flash 9 and published. The problem is
that the text that I have in there is being cut off when published
(publish preview only, The full publish works fine so far). I've
narrowed it down to being a problem with the filters that are used.
I'm using a basic drop shadow on the static text.
More specifically, when I publish using Flash 7, filters are
not supported and they are dropped out and the entire word shows.
When I publish in Flash 8 or 9 with filters turned on, the words
are cut off. For example the word "connection", when a filter is
applied, all that publishes is "connecti". The o and n are gone.
And if I change the settings on that drop shadow filter, the word
is cut off in a different place than before, sometimes cutting a
letter in half. When I delete the filter and publish in 8 or 9, the
entire word shows again. Also, I can edit the blurX or Y, or the
strength or distance and it will sometimes show the entire word.
But when I do this to other words, it creates a problem on those
words. If I then go and edit the settings back or to different
numbers, cutoff happens once again.
This is very inconsistent and makes working with filters
difficult since I can't preview what I've done without doing a full
publish. I've converted the words to movie clips and so far have
not had the same problem, however, I don't want to add movie clips.
So this basically looks like a glitch with this new version of
Flash. I sure hope that someone at Adobe sees this post and might
look into the problem.
I'm on an Intel based MacBook Pro. If anyone has run into
this problem, please let me know if you have found there to be a
solution rather than a work around. Thanks to Anyone who can help.
And once again, this only appears to be a problem when I do a
publish preview, not a full publish.
Tobin

Answer 1

Thanks; thats helpful.
What's going on is that the filter is being reused for your
text instances.
Flash does automatic associations between frames to see where
some objects
should be instances of or related to the objects in the frame
before it. In
your case, since each of your frames have a single static
text field in the
same depth (one spot above the jump in button), and since
they all use the
same drop shadow filter with the same settings, Flash will
reuse that exact
same filter for each of the objects in consecutive frames at
those depths
assuming they are the same object. What this amounts to is
the bounding box
for the first text+filter combination being used for all
others. You can
see this more clearly if you move the "Love" text to be at
the beginning of
the sequence and then test your movie.
What can you do? Here are a few options (though only a few
may work in your
situation):
- include one frame between each text field
- on every other text field, modify a property of the filter,
either
adjusting the strength by a value of 1, changing the quality,
or something
not visible but enough to make Flash recognize it as a
different filter
- in a layer under every other textfield place an invisible
object. This
should force every other text field to be at a higher depth
thereby
preventing Flash from assuming they are the same object as
the one before
it.
- place each text field in a movie clip thereby separating
the filters from
the same timeline (or, technically, just every other text
field would be
necessary)
- change your text to dynamic text. These will be treated as
separate
instances (or at least Flash will be wise enough not to be so
static in its
application of the filter). You may need to be sure to embed
your fonts for
anti-aliasing
In the mean time I will officially log a bug. Though Flash is
"technically"
doing what it thinks is best, its not working out very well
for this case.
"PhoTobin" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
>I have not scaled the text at all. We've just used font
size. Here is the
>link to download the FLA.
>
>
http://www.3peaksintl.com/intro-filter.zip