Lost Entire Days Work on Flash Project

I'm getting familiar with Flash CS3 and now I'm wondering: Is
it the more complex, the more intricacy that is put into a Flash
project, the more dangerous it becomes if you go off in a wrong
direction and need to go back to the most recently saved version. I
had to do that today and lost my entire job because going back to
the last saved version did not have all of its 'nuts and bolts' in
place. This is a very hard question to form, because the project
was so involved for my newcomer brain.
The scenario is selecting instances on screen that contain
button symbols. The Adobe Classroom In A Book, Lesson 6 on page
202, has me constructing buttons with up over down and hit and is
asking me to select instances that are not placed on the stage and
click swap. There was no instance of the symbol it named on the
stage so first, I thought I must have eliminated a step, so I
reverted to last saved version but all that did is place me in
unidentifiable territory with missing layers and nothing looking
like it did the last time I saved.
Tell me, is Flash that tedious? or do I need a new fool-proof
way of working so I can go back a few steps without, like I did
today, losing a whole day's worth of work on this project.
I'm really disappointed, as most applications, Photoshop,
Illustrator, etc. you can save versions as you go and return to
them opening exactly as you saved them. Tell me if Flash is strange
compared to other programs. Do I need a specialized way of saving?
I don't like losing a lot of work. It reminds me of the days of
working with the Commodore 64 computer, which would lead you on for
hours and then pfzzzzzz.... everything is gone because of hardware
errors.
I will stay away from this project for a few days and pick it
up again later, starting from scratch. In the meantime, I hope I
can gain some insight in how to work 'safely' from the experts
here.
Thank You,
Ken

Flash is a little touchy, compared with the long-standing
applications that Adobe has been improving for years. For instance,
having a cursor in a field and then doing a 'select all' will not
select the contents of that field so you can change them, but it
will select most of everything existing on the stage or timeline.
Something to be aware of. As I hack my way to learning Flash, a
most distressful experience, I have discovered that in the above
tutorial that I needed to be aware that the instance I was working
with is named in the property inspector. I was using my instinct to
see what was on the stage without being aware that what is actually
there goes by a name, a name that I can verify in the property
inspector.
The easiest things are hard for the beginner.
I'll be glad to take the college class in Flash I have lined
up for Winter term. By getting a lot of crying behind me, I will be
able to learn more and interact with the instructor in a more
meaningful way.

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Working with Flash projects

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flash/cs/using/WSd60f23110762d6b883b18f10cb1fe1af6-7effa.html

Note to forum users: This is additional information for the help, not a question. However, if you have more to add about Flash projects, please do. The documentation on it doesn't have much for people using this in earnest.
Before you try to use this for a project that is of a scale that needs it, be aware that flash projects don't work well unless you can have all of your fla/xfl files in the root of a single directory. That is, if you make a change in a shared symbol in a file that is in a nested directory, not only will that update not carry over to the AuthorTimeSharedAssets (and thus the other files), but it will be overwritten when you close the file and reopen it. This failure is completely silent, so you can go along making changes for hours without realizing they didn't "take."
If you try to get around this by putting your files outside the project and using Locations, when you open a symbol in the Location directory for editing, it will prompt you to open AuthorTimeSharedAssets for editing. Not exactly the best workflow ever, but it at least gets the symbol updated in the right place to make things work as expected.

HELP - I LOST 3 DAYS WORK!!!

Dear all.
The demo I have been working on for the last 3 days keeps crashing out on me when I try to perform a simple action like adding a button!
The error I get is the standard "windows has encountered a problem and needs to close"
Can anything be done to "fix" my file???
I hope so.......
Thanks
Tim.

Hi there
I believe you send an E-Mail message with the file attached to the address that was provided.
Cheers... Rick
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Working on Flash over a network

In the past I have had an issue when working on flash
projects over the office network. The files would suddenly say they
could not save and the file itself would disappear. I lost a few
projects this way and found many others who had the same
experience. I read a report from Macromedia saying that this was a
known issue and the only way round it was to work locally which is
what I have been doing ever since. This was all years ago and it
just occurred to me that in the course of subsequent Flash versions
this issue might have been fixed. Does anyone know one way or the
other?
Cheers all

quote:
Originally posted by:
Pop Clingwrap
In the past I have had an issue when working on flash
projects over the office network. The files would suddenly say they
could not save and the file itself would disappear. I lost a few
projects this way and found many others who had the same
experience. I read a report from Macromedia saying that this was a
known issue and the only way round it was to work locally which is
what I have been doing ever since. This was all years ago and it
just occurred to me that in the course of subsequent Flash versions
this issue might have been fixed. Does anyone know one way or the
other?
We still strongly advise customers to -not- work across the
network. While we've managed to reduce the potential issues, the
underlying code that originally cause that problem has not really
changed.
The main problem is that if for some reason you're working on
a network file, and the machine loses the connection to the
network, Flash authoring has no way to recover and will fail to
save the file (and may in some cases potentially corrupt the file,
though we never were able to replicate that in-house).
So no, please don't work across the network live if you can
avoid it.

I was working on a project a few days ago and now I'm not getting any audio or visuals out of it. In the project file the screen went grey. Not sure how to fix this. I'm new to iMovie, but the program seems easy to use and my Mac is new. Any help?

I used to use Movie Maker and it would be able to handle lots of file uploads and big projects. I figure iMovie can do the same since it's newer and it's on my iMac. I was working on a project for a few months, it was working fine up until about a few days ago when the project file just stopped working. Not getting any audio or visuals and the screen went grey. I hope to not lose the project file as I've spent a lot of time on it. The project will still show up in iMovie, but it won't play. Other project files will, but this one won't for some reason. It's my first time using this program and I assumed it would be fine, but now it's causing me big problems. Anyone else run into a similar problem?

But it is I jsut can sync, back up files, or anything becuase its stuck at this screene and wont do execute when i click either of those button

Editing Working Days/Non Working Days in the base Project Calendar PWA

Hello Experts,
I am attempting to edit working days/non working days in the base project calendar PWA 13. I receive an error message when I attempt to open the base project schedule.
I click the "edit" button under "Enterprise Calendars" page. The error message states:
"This Project Web App feature requires at least Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0" (using Chrome)
Attempting to Opening PWA in I.E. I receive a different error message stating that I need Project Professional installed on my computer and it cannot find the current project.
I have Admin rights, I have project pro, and Im able to access any project or function using PWA and Project Pro. Can you tell me what I am missing (detailed steps--kinda new to PWA)
Thanks so much.

If you allow me to jump in, I'd advice you to first open MS Project Pro and then try again.
Also check that your MS Project Pro URL account do not finish with /default.aspx.
Finally ensure that your PWA URL is in the trusted site and eventually add it to the compatibility sites.
Hope this helps,
Guillaume Rouyre, MBA, MVP, P-Seller |

I've done a project on iMovie, after it finished finalising, i just closed iMovie, now i think i've lost all my work because i can't find it and when i found it, the movie was just black - please help

I've done a project on iMovie, after it finished finalising, i just closed iMovie, now i think i've lost all my work because i can't find it and when i found it, the movie was just black - please help

Hi
More info please
• Free space on - Start-Up (Mac OS) Hard Disk ? How much ?
• Any other hard disks connected ? Formatted as ?
Yours Bengt W

Lost two days of editing work...

Hello. My computer got stuck. After rebooting, Final Cut X opened and showed me a timeline that had lost two days of my work!!! Any chance or recup the work? Any sort of autosave vault somewhere? Thanks for your help.

Thank you very much Russ. I did it already, but unfortunately, I don't know why, this backup is from yesterday at 19:20h, so all the work afterwards is lost... I don't know how the app does do any back up after that time. This means I have to start over with another application, this was a professional job and I can see Final Cut X is not reliable at this point.
Thanks a lot for your help. Best wishes.
Fernando

SWC files stop working in large project

Hi,
My company is working on a casual game which is entirely made in Flash. To speed up development/compile time we split some of it up into SWC files, for example dialog controls, cutscenes, particle effects are all controlled via SWC files.
This was working great up until a few days ago, we have been working on this project for about 8 months with no major problems. However, now all of a sudden, when we compile the game, none of the SWC files work. The game compiles and runs ok, but nothing from the SWC files are working.
The strange thing is that if we remove one of the SWC files from the folder (the game reads all the SWC files from one folder) then the game will work. Even if you remove a SWC which isnt immediately used by the game it will still work. It's almost as if there is some limit to how many SWC files you can have loaded. (There are only 10 SWC files in the folder we are loading from).
So anyone else heard of this problem? or can suggest a fix?
Thanks,
Greg
--- UPDATE:
I did some reasearch and this problem might be something to do with the Java heap size being too low when it tries to compile. Lots of people seem to have posted similar problems. Is it possible to increase the size of the Java Heap for flash?
Interestingly, I went to my actionscript settings in the "library path" section and I removed "textlayout.swc" which obviously isnt anything to do with our game and we dont use it- the game then compiles and the SWC files work. So it definately seems like something is running out of memory when you include too many SWC files or files which are too large.
-- UPDATE:
I have solved this problem now- it was indeed an issue with Java running out of heap space. If anyone else has this problem, you can change the heap size in:
C:\Users\(user)\AppData\Local\Adobe\Flash CS5\en_US\Configuration\ActionScript 3.0\jvm.ini
change -Xmx128m to -Xmx256m
I guess I kind of answered my own question there...

I think I have a similar problem, but I'm creating a long slide show, perhaps 500 images at 72 frames each, and have seemingly hit a wall at around 16,000 frames, about halfway through. I can still place images but can't control their position which remains locked at 0.0, 0.0. I can go back down the line and delete and bring in a new image without a problem. Also, just before this problem appeared, the bars indicating the last keyframe and additional frames appeared to be cut off, like a lopped off branch. I'm a designer with minimal html experience. The code solution for the Java heap meant nothing to me. Any help?

Please help me - cannot publish my flash project

Hi
I'm new to flash mx 2004 and I'm having a problem publishing and playing my finished project. Every time I try to play or publish the project I get a 'The Flash program is out of memory. Please increase virtual memory on your PC' message. I was originally working on a 1 gig RAM PC and thought this was the problem. I've since borrowed a 2 GIG RAM PC which allowed me to do a little bit more work before I got the same problem. I then got a 4 GIG PC and was able to finish the project but if I try to play it or publish it the program crashes. Any Ideas. This is a college project which I need to publish as a windows exe file and I can't do it. I don't know what's wrong. The project is about 280 meg in size. I tried to 'save and compact' but it still crashes. I also tried to debug the flash project and it crashed again. I'm baffled as I think a 4 GIG PC should be ample and I no longer think that this is entirely a RAM problem anyway. Please any suggestions would be appreciated

More goes into compilation than the RAM size, indeed.
Is the file size you mention (280 MB) the size of the SWF or the size of the FLA?
If it is the size of the SWF, then it is likely that your FLA is at least double that, and - while running in the OS, is likely taking upwards of 1GB of the available RAM. The OS is using this RAM also, as well as any other processes that are running on the computer.
I would say that your best choice, at this point, is to break the project into multiple smaller flash files, that will compile easier and run faster in the completed state.

Managing a large Flash project

I work for a game development studio in London. We are prototyping using Autodesk Scaleform and building our game UI using Flash. We will need to be able to run a large project with a team of 3-4 artists and 10+ programmers. We use Perforce source control system for storage of all code and assets. We need to be able to manage a project with multiple shared resources and multiple people (artists & programmers) working on screens and controls.
Our problem is as follows:
We want to be able to create skinned graphical custom components, such as buttons, sliders, checkboxes as well as more complex controls such as tables and game specific elements.
We want to be able to share graphics assets in a single location and allow multiple artists and coders to work on shared components simultaneously. We need all of this to be stored in a Perforce source control repository.
For AS3 code this is all fairly straight forward. It works like any other codebase and we have set up FlashBuilder and FlashDevelop projects.
Now, the options seem to be as follows:
- Create a flash project or projects. The problem here is that all of the assets are copied into AuthortimeSharedAssts.fla. This means that, because FLA is a binary format, our source control cannot allow more than one person to edit any shared resource at the same time.
- Set up manual authortime sharing. This will allow work on multiple shared components because individuals can update a small discrete FLA file and this will automatically update a larger shared librar. The problem is that this does not allow sharing of graphics assets, which means that, if an artist updates a graphic, this does not filter down to individual flash files.
- Use the XFL format. This would allow us to merge files when checking in to source control as they are plain text and it saves out individual assets as separate files, which looks perfect. The problem is that I can't see how to make a project, which entirely uses XFL files (i.e. makes something like AuthortimeSharedAssets.xfl).
At the moment I can't see any obvious, sensible way of running a large project in Flash. We cannot be the first to do this sort of thing though.
Can anyone help or explain how we should do it?

Just an $0.02 that is probably the hardest solution to implement, you really need a good project manager. You can't expect great results from tossing a bunch of autonomous bodies in motion on shared resources with no human control mechanism. Software can help but your format is ultimately binary, so outside Smart Objects (which haven't worked well in a networked multi-OS environment for me), you're not going to gain the benefits of traditional diff for source code.
Consider implementing either a project manager or even better, a project manager with decent project management software. It can be as cheap as Copper Project. You're given a hud with tasks and it's up to the Project Manager to assign the tasks so nothing overlaps and collisions are avoided from the start. It's even a large challenge in the binary world for a high quality Project Manager.
If you really need a garage level setup, you may simply have to employ locking network files that are in use. Anyone trying to use something won't be able to, it will stifle progress but you won't run into overlaps or impossible merges. It's just brute force and inefficient.

Captivate 4 AS2 Text Entry Box not working with Flash Player 11

I am having issues with text entry boxes not working at all in flash 11. I am using Captivate 4 and exporting an AS2 swf. When you get to the slide you can type but you cannot see anything nor does the button or keystroke to move on. Also there is no cursor. Any ideas?

You said it is not working with Flash 11, so does that mean you tested with previous version and that worked?
While publishing choose Flash player as 9 and publish that, verify if that plays in a compatible web browser.
AS 2 is a legacy scripting, it has been said not too be supported with even Flash Player 10 --
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AS2LCR/Flash_10.0/help.html?content=Part2_AS2_LangRef_1.html
I believe if you switch back to version 9 while publish your project, it should work.
Thanks,
Anjaneai

Camera just up and stopped working with flash player. SUUUUPER annoying. Any ideas?

Hi:
Windows XP SP3 32bit, latest updates applied
Firefox 3.6.6 (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E))
IE 8.0.6001.18702
Flash Player 10,1,53,64
HP EliteBook 8530w with built-in HP camera (brand spankin' new).
So Flash Player today decided it doesn't want to work with my webcam. I have pulled my hair out trying to figure out what the problem is. The camera works fine with other video camera software, such as Adobe Flash Live Encoder 3.1, for example, or the various Microsoft cam tools. But Flash Player just won't see it. When I visit a website that uses the camera through flash, all I get is a black box. I never get the privacy screen that asks me if I would like to allow the site temporary access to my camera.If i go into my settings, and go to the camera tab, it shows my camera device in the dropdown box. But you know how if you double-click the little box under the dropdown, it should activate your camera and display a little video inside that box? That doesn't work for me. All I get is this:
It doesn't matter if I use FF or IE. I've re-installed Flash Player, both the FF version and the Ax version. To no avail. I've logged into my computer as a different user, because hell maybe it's some weird dumb thing in the Flash Player cache or something. Nope.
Now here's the super, super, super annoying part: I just recently moved to this laptop and one of the things I was looking forward to was a computer where my webcam would FINALLY work with flash player again. Yes, that's right: my old computer had this exact same problem. And in both cases, at one point the camera worked with Flash player no problem, and then at some point, it just stopped working.
This makes me think, of course, that the problem is some nefarious piece of software I've installed, but I can't think of what that is. I know the camera was working with my new computer as early as last week. Recently I've installed a bunch of software, including Adobe Media Live Encoder 3.1, Flash Professional CS5, and the Adobe Connect add-in. I've uninstalled everything except CS5, because, hey, who wants to re-install that if they don't have to? I'll do that as a last result, but the guy sitting next to me has the entire CS5 suite installed and camera works fine for him with Flash Player (same exact hardware too), so I don't think it's that. Other than that, I dunno. I've got VS2008 and 2010 installed. GoToMeeting. Office. That's about it.
So. Any ideas? Any thoughts on how I could even start to debug the issue? Logging or something? Any help is much appreciated.

Yes.
Victory is mine.
VICTORY IS MINE!!!
Solution:
Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
Set
AVHardwareDisable=1
to:
AVHardwareDisable=0
Restart your browser. Done. Camera works now.
I really want to shout this solution from the rooftops, because try Googling the solution sometime. I did. I failed. You will too. Hopefully if I use some more 18-point bold font, Google will index it faster, because that's the way it works right?
I actually had no idea that Flash Player has a folder in Windows\system32 at all, and I definitely had no idea that this file existed. I am guessing some stinking app I installed decided I needed AVHardwareDisable set to 1 for some reason (effers). I found out about the location by just lazily searching through the windows registry for "Flash Player" and eventually saw it pointing to that directory. A little more poking around and I found this file.
Those of you who actively support this forum: please keep this in the back of your mind, next time someone has audio/video input problems with Flash Player. I've found an awful lot of forum posts from people with cameras not working, and I bet a good portion of them need this fix. Reinstalling Flash Player will not fix it. Here's hoping the solution comes up in Google for the next unlucky soul.

Is there a way to know how many hours of work did a project demanded ?

Is there a way to know how many hours of work did a project demanded (even if it was on multiple days, sessions or cross-working other projects)?
I am using Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 on windows 7.
Thaks,
Mihai

There is no feature for that in Premiere Pro. I suggest that you keep a project log either in a spreadsheet, database, Notepad or Wordpad file, or a hand written one.
You can file a feature request here:
Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Extracting resourse like .ai & png files from a flash project

Hi! I have been assined the task of extracting the images from old flash projects and am having a devil of a time doing so.
There are lots of programs that you can extract info out of the swf files, but these don't give you the original .ai Ilustrator files that may have been used to create the presentation with, or png files with transparent backgrounds.
Is there a plug-in in Flash that allows you to capture these items in the document? when I drag the item from the library (lets say a .ai file) to the stage and right click and copy it, it only gives me part of the item when I paste it back into illustrator... and when I drag the PNG resource to photoshop I get it with a background I do not want.
any help on this would be great!!!!
I have both cs3 and cs4 so a solution in either one would be great!

Well that is kinda what I've been doing, only its not quite that simple as doing it that way makes an image of what is on the entire stage. What I have to do is create a new project copy over all my library items to the new project, and pull over each one individually and do it that way.... if you have a lot of items in your library (which I do a lot of times since these contain a lot of animation sequenced into individual frames) this process can be quite tedious. Yes you can save out to .ai illustrator files this way as well.
I was hoping for something a little more... automatic or at least where I don't have to drop each item individually on a stage, reposition, ect...
But yes, the previous post is one way of doing it with some fooling around with.

Lost Entire Days Work on Flash Project

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