Blinking FlashEff logo and troubleshooting

When previewing my movie the dynamic text fields have blinking FlashEff logos text in the top right corners and no effects play. I've searched through the forums and the knowledgebase and didn't see anything about blinking type.

I've found through a long process of elimination that FlashEff does not like to have more than one effect playing at the same time on the timeline. So everything in my movie is not overlapping in time. Again, I found nothing when searching for "flasheff limitations" online.

For the last two days I have been testing and retesting a 9min presentation that was designed with flasheff in mind. It has been frustrating not to have detailed information on bugs or fixes. I'm feeling more and more like a scientist getting FlashEff to run than a designer. I've even considered starting a log.

My issue at the moment is that I've placed all text in this presentation and successfully tested it (all effects played nicely) but then I placed in the audio voice overs and started to increase the amount of frames some of the text took up on the time to better match up with the audio and now I have blinking text.

Here is what I've tried to diagose the issue:

- Deleted layer by layer until the effects played as they should, which showed two layers that are causing the issue.
- Restored those layers and deleted off the FlashEff component (the effects play as they should)
- Pasted on the component from a functional peice of dynamic text (effects fail - blink blink blink)
- Reset the instance name to something else and confirmed that it matched in the component (effects fail - blink blink blink)
- Applied a new component on the text from the component panel (effects fail - blink blink blink)
- Ran the Optimizer (locks up flash after a few times of clicking to continue on the alert about taking too long)
- Ran the Update (locks up flash after a few times of clicking to continue on the alert about taking too long)
- Rebooted twice
- Confirmed that the text is Dynamic Text with Selectable, Render text as HTML, and auto Embedded font (arial) (effects fail - blink blink blink)

I still have no effects unless I delete flasheff from them.

I need help. Anything would be appreciated.

If you would like to see the state of the movie here is a link of it with the components of those two lines deleted.

[staging2.fiserv-ecomhosting.com]

Well, blinking might occur for several reasons. I think the most common of them is because of the large number of text effects used in the clip. Usually that would result in an error message: "5005: Unknown error optimizing byte code.". In this case this post might help you: http://www.flasheff.com/forum/read.php?23,749,749#msg-749 - it shows you how to turn off the optimizer from the Flash Publish Settings. Also, it would be a good idea to place all your Flashff instances and their target objects into container movie clips, just like this post is telling you to: http://www.flasheff.com/forum/read.php?23,491.

I hope this will work for you. If not, please contact the support team (support [at] jumpeyecomponents [dot] com) and describe your problem in your mail and also attach the source file of your animation. Thank you.

I tried the optimization toggle, no change.
I tried putting the component and the text in a movie within the timeline, success!

Thank you for your help Negush!

I've got a big problem now. None of my increases in delay for the hide event are being saved from session to session. Yesterday I put in about 6 hours of time on calculating the duration of each text segment on the timeline so I could change the delay of the hide event. Now today when I open the file all those delays are different. What's up with this?

That's quite a strange problem you have there... This is the first time I hear about it... Did you manage to save your fla file before closing it ? Maybe there was a problem with Flash and closed unexpectedly and the open fla file was not saved (I've experienced it a few times). Unfortunately, I don't really have any other idea of what could have happened. Especially since FlashEff doesn't really have anything to do with saving its properties. The FlashEff properties are set via code or through the FlashEff panel and it would be Adobe Flash's job to save the file with all of its content and settings, so FlashEff takes no part in this process. Right now, I can't give any other explanation to this problem.

Since having the original problem I've done some tests.

- I opened the fla and changed the delay for the hide animation.
- Clicked out of the component and then back in to verify that it is keeping the value in ram. (the change value remained)
- Saved the fla and exited flash
- Opened flash, connected to flash eff server, and opened the fla
- Inspected the same component. (the valued was different than the changed value, seemed to have reverted)

My next test will be doing the same but deleting the component, replacing it from the components window, setting the animiation, saving, exit flash, reopen flash and the fla, verify the value.

I'm running Flash CS 3, and the latest version of Flasheff.

I just completed another round of tests.

- I opened the file after connecting to the flash eff server in Flash
- Deleted one of the components off of the text
- Dragged out a new flasheff component on to the dynamic text
- Set the effects and hide delay
- Saved the file and closed Flash
- Reopened Flash, connected to the Flasheff server, opened the fla
- Examined the show and hide. (The animation effect was not saved for the show, however the delay of the hide stayed the same)

I tried this thinking that the update to Flasheff might have changed the component so using a new component should be the fix, however it is not a solution. I'm still stalled.

My client has now requested that I remove the effects and do it with just flash.

@mrfowler

I think I know what you mean. However, the way you made the tests, Flash should have saved the file without problems. I've remade the tests myself, exactly the way you presented the steps and all the settings were saved correctly. However, we've just discovered a problem that might have happened to you:
- apply a FlashEff efect over a target object
- save the file
- than change some FlashEff setting from the FlashEff panel (notice that the file name will not have that asterisk character (*) that shows you the file has changed
- close the FlashEff panel
- close Flash
At this moment Flash will close, without asking whether to save the file or not, even though you've changed a FlashEff setting from the panel. It seems that Flash does not detect that kind of changes. So the next time you open that file, the target FlashEff property will have the previous value and not the one you set the last time. We'll be looking into this, to see how we can fix it and update the panel accordingly.

I'm not an idoit. This is why in all my tests I've....

"- Saved the fla and exited flash"
"- Saved the file and closed Flash"

From the text above why would you assume I made changes after saving the fla and closing flash?

Please test the file I submitted again. Try a component that shares the timeline with other flasheff effects.

- Open the file
- Set 5 of the flash eff hide effects to a delay of 32 (record the previous delay value)
- Save the fla and exit flash
- Open flash and the fla
- Review the same 5 flash eff components hide delays and compare them to the record values.

I'm sure you will see the problem. If you don't I would be happy to review it with you via webex.

@mrfowler
I've retested the file as you specified but still, every thing seems to be ok. I've changed the delay property for the hide effects of 7 FlashEff instances in your animation, saved the file and closed Adobe Flash. Next time I opened the file, all the new delay values were there, just as I left them.

negush can we set up a webex so I can show you the problem?

Please send an email to the support team (support [at] jumpeyecomponents [dot] com) so we can set up a webex meeting.

@mrfowler

Unfortunately I managed to reproduce the problem and indeed there are times when Flash does not detect the changing of property values so it will not allow saving the file with the File->Save command, only with the File->Save As command. Also a few of my colleagues experienced this problem and we might have found a workaround for this. We modified the panel and updated it so next time you open Flash and open up the panel it should update itself to the newest version on the server. Now it instructs Flash the file has changed and the File->Save command will work. Please let me know if you still have problems with saving the file.
Apologies for any inconveniences this problem might have caused you.