Wired Quicktime And Flash

Oct 26, 2001

If you have QuickTime 4 or later (up until QT7.3 when it gets broken) installed, you should see a QuickTime panorama above containing animation created in Flash. It was created by importing the Quicktime panorama into Flash, then adding Flash content to be displayed with the panorama, and exporting both the Flash and Quicktime together from Flash as a Quicktime movie. The result is a Quicktime movie which contains Flash tracks.

With version 5 of Quicktime, 'wiring' in Quicktime allows sophisticated interactivity with Flash. This wiring code can perform such tasks as setting variables inside the Flash track, which is used to control the compass movie clip at the top of the screen. The above example was possible with the help of VrHotWires. This software does the dirty work of embedding wiring inside the Quicktime movie.

Playback of swf files has been supported since version 4 of Quicktime. You can, in fact, open any Flash .swf file with Quicktime. As long as it is a Flash 4 movie, any Flash button, animation or action will work in Quicktime. You cannot however, play back Quicktime movies using the Flash player. If Quicktime is imported into Flash, it is not possible to export the Quicktime as a Flash movie. It simply won't appear in the finished product.

To import Quicktime into Flash, the main timeline of the Flash movie must be exactly the same length in frames as the Quicktime movie being used. This will be affected by the frame rate of your Flash timeline. Although a panorama seems like a single frame, it will take up a certain number of frames on the timeline depending on the size of the panorama. The use of movie clips allows you to include any number of independent animations on the main timeline.

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