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Thread: 500 small swf's or 1 big .exe : what is best??

  1. #1
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    500 small swf's or 1 big .exe : what is best??

    Your valued opinion is needed here (yes yes, yours too)!

    I have a client that wants an interactieve CD-rom with lots of text, about 45 videos and 500 pictures (nope, no typing error, that's really five hundred).

    They also want to have some copyright protection on these pictures. I have made up a little scheme but if you got any ideas, shoot! My idea is to put every picture in a swf of its own (together with a little protection through AS) and load these swf's into the main file (menu/navigation) when needed.

    A second idea I have is to put all of the pictures in different scenes of the main file (menu/navigation) and wrap up the whole presentation in one exe-file.

    Whaddayathink? What's best, what are possible problems or difficulties, any ideas or experiences you might want to share... Do tell me folks, do tell me!!!

    Thanks already

    Dubya

  2. #2
    Senior Member pellepiano's Avatar
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    You cant really protect the images that way. Any one who knows how to make a screen capture (print Screen) can take it in a second.

    Watermarking in Photoshop may help a little ( depending on what media the stolen images are presented later on).

    Simplest solution is to just have the jpgs on the cdrom, as MX can load these with no nedd of having them in a swf. That will save some time.

    It will aslo make the exe smaller and a lot faster to preview while you are making it.

    -Pelle Piano
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    500 small one's or 1 big one - continued

    Hey Pelle,

    Nice of you to react so fast.

    About the protection thing... We're talking about a medical CD rom with pictures/explanations about a specific treatment.

    My idea is:
    - all navigation is put in a main file (say MENU)where an identifaction of the legal owners (logo) is always visible
    - in MENU, I put a hidden variable somewhere (say X = legal)
    - in all the small picture-swf's I put a little action script that says something like:
    - look for variable X in MENU
    - if X is found and X = legal, display picture
    - if X is not found or undefined, put a big copyright warning on top of picture
    The idea is to discourage people from taking the pictures out of an images-folder and presenting them as their own.

    I know that even, when displayed in the MENU-thing, people can still take a print-screen or snag-it snapshot of the whole thing. But hey, a little discouraging seems better than doing nothing at all. Right?

    Anyway: if I should go for the ONE BIG exe file, you think this would work (technically speaking???)

    Dubya

  4. #4
    Senior Member pellepiano's Avatar
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    That seems like a good way. And easy to set up.
    The last question I dont understand as you just described one exe and a lot of swf's.

    -Pelle Piano
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    1 big exe-file ...

    OK, so the protection-idea seems to be a good way of giving the client a little bit of copyright security. I'm sure that I'll be able to convince him that "copy-protected" and digital media are an impossible combination (hey, if Sony can't protect their stuff, how should I manage this...)

    Now about the 1 big exe file: suppose I forget about the 500 little picture-swf's and I make just 1 swf with everything in it: the main MENU/NAVIGATION and all of the pictures and Quicktime video's... all in all this would result in some 650 MB of "data".

    Now, I've seen CD-rom's containing just one file with 400-500 MB of data but it usually were CD's made with Director, not Flash.

    Now, we all know that "swf" means SMALL web file, right?
    So, my technical question is: an interactive CD made with Flash with just 1 file of 500-600 MB... would it work?

  6. #6
    Senior Member pellepiano's Avatar
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    For one thing it will take forever to load and requires ( I think) that the users has 500 mb of free ram.
    And working in Flash with such a beast would go very slowly and taje forever to preview.

    -Pelle Piano
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  7. #7
    Living Proof mave_the_rave's Avatar
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    Hi..

    Im not quite sure of the method but a guy I work with, (who is
    not in the office today), protectected his Pics. simply by
    placing a rectangle over each Pic. I believe on a different layer.

    The rectangle was Alpha'd down to '0'

    Anyone trying to steal his pics just gets a blank rectangle.
    If someone tells you it can't be done,
    it's probally because they don't know how.

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    500 vs 1

    As usual, Pellepiano came up with some very useful information. From what I've read on some technote on Macromedia's site, I now think it would be next to impossible to load the whole 500 MB into the PC's memory (MM suggestion: use Director for such a project).

    Therefore, I hereby declare the idea of 1 BIG FILE as officially dead and burried !

    But I would love to hear from Mave the Rave (or his out-of-the-office colleague) how they protected their pics.

    CU guys!

  9. #9
    Senior Member pellepiano's Avatar
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    The movieclip rectangle trick is ( afaik ) a way to fix a bug in Flash which makes smoth gradients look banded. generally you make a mc (filled with anything) that cover the whole stage on the top layer, set the alpha 0. That way you dont have to fix each image separately. However alpha always has some negative impact on framerate.

    How something like this would prevent stealing a image i have no idea. How would one end up with just the rectangle? Certainly not if you make a Print Screen command.

    A way could be that the main movie always SET tha alpha on the rectangle to 0 so if the image swf is viewed by itself just the rectangle would show. But then I think the original idea was better with the swf demanding a variable from the host swf.

    -Pelle Piano
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  10. #10
    Lifesaver Lightwave Network's Avatar
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    Something this large might be best done in Director.

    Generally, when you use loadMovie() in a Flash projector that's running from a CD-ROM, the movie can "hiccup", skip, freeze, etc., but only if the loaded .swf contains audio. If your external video files do NOT contain audio, then you should be just fine.

    Please read my post: http://www.flashkit.com/board/showth...99#post2443799

    Flash is just touchy from a CD-ROM. For some reason, it just can't buffer or stream from a CD very well, but in every case I've encountered--there was always audio in the problematic .SWF. Memory is another huge issue, because Flash never unloads anything from memory until it closes, or will also unload when the container that uses loadMovie() loads a different movie (the previous movie is unloaded from memory, and the new one is loaded.)

    Every embedded JPG, PNG, MP3, video, etc. will cause memory requirements to go up quite a bit. The big key is using a program like Memturbo or the Task Manager in Win2k/XP - watch your available memory before you start your projector. Then, after it starts, watch available memory DROP. The more embedded content within your projector, the more memory is used, and the more likely you're going to crash someone's machine (if they don't have the required amount of RAM.)

    I've made Flash movies that require 120MB of RAM, or even just 2 MB of RAM. Anything with high requirements always crashes SOMEONE's computer. Something you'll definetely want to consider is to put hardware requirements on your CDs. This has saved our butts on several occasions, just because some clients don't understand it. Put a label in front of them, and they don't argue.


    ... gimme just one more line of code to ease the pain.

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  11. #11
    Lifesaver Lightwave Network's Avatar
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    For protecting pics, you could try the poor-man's version for non-savvy users:

    Label all of your JPG extensions something else. .DUB if you want. Flash will still load a JPG file with a different extension--just as long as the file's a true JPG format. I think Director does, too.

    Not everyone realizes that that big folder full of .DUB files are really JPGs. Anyone who's actually hunting them down for another use generally wont have a problem with it anyway, because you can take screen shots if you need to, regardless of your method of image protection.


    ... gimme just one more line of code to ease the pain.

    http://www.ln.tv
    http://www.davevillano.com
    http://www.premierloftsdenver.com
    http://www.backyard.cc -- coming soon!


  12. #12
    Databarnak atRax's Avatar
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    I just had the idea ( if its possible ) for the protection of Anti-ScreenCapture.

    How about that you put a action that when the PrintScreen button ( For PC ) or the Apple-Shift-3 and Apple-Shift-4 makes the Dinamicly displayed jpg go to 0 alpha ?

    Dunno if thats possible but probably yes... well all that can be turn over if the guy use a snap-shot software or something !

    Dunno im trying to help
    I ask you all to concentrate really hard on the freedom of all being. Its hard not to be very angry it is impossible We have to focus this confusion frustration helplessness feeling into a creative outlet Anger can spawn such amazing creativity through Street art Free art to teach each other know each other a language our evolution Go ahead and break some dumb rules

  13. #13
    Lifesaver Lightwave Network's Avatar
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    Heh, that's a great idea, but there's still a problem with it.

    PrintScreen is the standard "Screen shot to clipboard" key, however, there are still plent of ways around it. For example, if you include external SWF files on your CD, make sure to "protect from import", otherwise, someone could easily import the SWF into a Flash document and extract most of the contents.

    The other problem is with programs like Paint Shop Pro, which has a screen shot macro you can set up to work on any key(s) you want, be your preference F1 - F12, Alt-X, Ctrl...whatever.

    Realistically, you can't worry much about people ripping off your images, just because it can be done, regardless of how hard you try to protect them. Watermarks kind of work, but it doesn't stop anyone from grabbing an image and using it. The only thing you can do to someone who rips off your (legally protected) content, is to take them to court when they do it. That's if you catch them.

    Hope this helps.


    ... gimme just one more line of code to ease the pain.

    http://www.ln.tv
    http://www.davevillano.com
    http://www.premierloftsdenver.com
    http://www.backyard.cc -- coming soon!


  14. #14
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    About the copy-protection... Like I said: it's just to give the client a little bit of safety and to discourage the normal users of this CD to steal the pictures. And yep, I no longer consider all of us who hang out here on these board as "normal". We all agree on that I think ;-)

    Part two of the problem: Flash or Director... I give up: I've read convincing testimonials from experienced users saying that Flash would work, and I've read equally convincing testimonials from other experienced users stating Flash would not do the trick.

    Somebody, please shoot me! Or send me copies of working and non-working examples of some large Flash-projects on a CD.

    Now, where did I leave my prozac pils.

    Dubya, the doubtful

  15. #15
    Lifesaver Lightwave Network's Avatar
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    Dubya, send me an email with your postal address in it. I'll send you some Flash-based interactive CDs.

    [OMITTED]

    (I'll erase the email address in this post after I get an email from you.)
    Last edited by Lightwave Network; 06-27-2003 at 02:11 AM.


    ... gimme just one more line of code to ease the pain.

    http://www.ln.tv
    http://www.davevillano.com
    http://www.premierloftsdenver.com
    http://www.backyard.cc -- coming soon!


  16. #16
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    the result?

    So, how did it go?

    Did you get that presentation doneDubya?

    I'm also making a presentation, which holds external swfs and 10 pieces of 20 minute long videos. I'm using FSP (Flash Studio Pro, from Multidmedia, www.multidmedia.com) to make the video part work, without straining the end users memory.

    Any views on that?
    hmm. works like a charm. not.

  17. #17
    Senior Member FPChris's Avatar
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    Not to break hearts but if its on screen,. it can be had.
    Alt+printscreen, paste is but one of many ways.
    At most you may prevent casual users from getting at them.

    Chris
    http://www.**********-dms.com

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