huge FLA file, slow responce

[Aleque]

Hi

I'm having a difficulty working on my .fla file due to the size of the document (150MB). It is running slow and majority of the time it just does not respond. How can i reduce the size or get around my situation?

I have Flash 8 version.

Could you be of any assistance, please?

[ElusiveMoose]

I'm guessing this is the same fla you've been working on for the length of your project?...

Flash saves a lot of extra info (undo lists, etc) in the fla. This makes it very big and unruly. Two ways to deal with this.

1) "save and compact" under the file menu. This throws out all the extra crap and resaves your fla with the same name.

2) "save as..." does just what you think it does (saves into a different file name), but it also compacts the new file.

I recommend option 2 as it allows you to keep a backup file around with all info, just in case.

Good luck.

[Aleque]

Hello, thanks for your answer.

Yes it is the same flash for my whole project - that way I can manage everything together, but then I have to pay the price of: fear of losing the whole file and losing all work (but I backup very often on different hard disks), and slow response.

So you say I should just save as, and call it something else? Because I already did that ;)


I'm guessing this is the same fla you've been working on for the length of your project?...

Flash saves a lot of extra info (undo lists, etc) in the fla. This makes it very big and unruly. Two ways to deal with this.

1) "save and compact" under the file menu. This throws out all the extra crap and resaves your fla with the same name.

2) "save as..." does just what you think it does (saves into a different file name), but it also compacts the new file.

I recommend option 2 as it allows you to keep a backup file around with all info, just in case.

Good luck.

[ElusiveMoose]

So you say I should just save as, and call it something else? Because I already did that ;)

And the new file (with the different name) is just as big as the old original file? :confused:

[Aleque]

And the new file (with the different name) is just as big as the old original file? :confused:


yep, but it is kinda wierd - for some weeks ago, the file was around 200MB, and suddenly it fell with approximately 50MB

More info about my file:
It has about 30 Scenes, 475 library items


I was considering doing following: taking my main file, saving it in several copies, delete some content in the first one, another content in the second, etc, so that every file has some part of content, but I am not sure how to link the final content though.

[ElusiveMoose]

Well, that's a nice sized fla. I'm not surprised by the MB #.

Try a save and compact, just to make sure you've got it down as small as you can.

Splitting up the file is an idea, but you'll have to deal with some AS to put it all together in the end. Perhaps it's better to just deal with the lag.

[Aleque]

Is there any limit on how big my file can be?

Well, that's a nice sized fla. I'm not surprised by the MB #.

Try a save and compact, just to make sure you've got it down as small as you can.

Splitting up the file is an idea, but you'll have to deal with some AS to put it all together in the end. Perhaps it's better to just deal with the lag.

[ElusiveMoose]

Is there any limit on how big my file can be?

16000 frames...

[flashcartoons]

thats pretty huge i wonder what animation you got

anyway a good way i keep file size down is

1. no jpgs
2. i optimize sounds to be less quality
3. not to many stokes or tweening
4. i never import video

what you could do is make different files for each scene, then you can find out exactly what is making it so huge

sometimes it ends up just being a huge .wav for me whenever its too big

[Dreamfaller]

the other thing you can do is pre comp your scene....unless the entire thing is a single "camera shot" I would take each scene and export them as quicktime MOV with the Animation codec...this leads to the lowest video quality loss....when you have each seen done...create a master project to import the movs and put the im in order. The quicktime animation codec is one of the best because it encodes the video in a way that it can keep sharp edges even at low resolutions. I hope that helps. ~D.