Subtitles of the Movie

Continuing from the previous movie my review of the various timeline effects that are available with Flash CS3, the first one in the list is the insert timeline effects, assistance, copy to grid effect. This duplicates a selected object by the number of columns and then multiplies the columns by the number of rows to create a grid of elements. Notice that I can set my grid size and my grid spacing, let's set a grid size of three rows and five columns. Click on update preview, see the change and there it is. Let's cancel this and now let's go to the next one, assistance distributed duplicate. This duplicates a selected object the number of times entered in the settings here in the dialog. The first element is a copy of the original objects, the objects are modified in increments until the final object reflects the parameters entered in the settings here. And like the other timeline effects go ahead and make your changes here to the settings and then click on update preview to see how that will play out in the animation. Let's go ahead and click OK on this one. Now let's test the movie to see how this came out. Pretty much the same as the preview there in the dialog. As I mentioned previously, you can apply these timeline effects to text elements as well as graphic symbols, movie clips, buttons and bitmap objects. But I think that the text elements are much a better way to show and demonstrate these, there are a lot more dramatic. Next we have blur, let's go ahead and better click on the text object there insert timeline effects, effects blur. This creates a motion blur effect by changing the alpha value position or scale of an object over time. I demonstrated this particular timeline effect in the previous movie. Next we have drop shadow, let's undo that timeline effect, now let's add a drop shadow, this creates a shadow below the selected elements. I have adjustments here for the alpha transparency. The color and the shadow offset. The expand effect expands, contracts or expands objects over time. This effect works with best with two or more objects grouped together or combined in a movie clip or graphic symbol and objects containing text or letters also work well with this effect. Let's go ahead and add a new layer here. And let's do that, let's add two objects to this layer here. And let's go ahead and change the color of one of those objects to something bright and let's now go ahead and select both objects and convert these to a movie clip symbol, like so. And now with that symbol selected and the timeline highlighted here the layer in the timeline, let's choose insert timeline effects, expand, let's change that to a squeeze there. It looks like it's squeezing both of those together. Let's go back and undo the grouping together of those in one symbol and let's change this to individual movie clip symbols like so. I think this'll probably work better. So now I have two movie clips on the same layer, I'll highlight both of them and now let's do insert timeline effects and let's try the expand now. There we go, now their expanding or contracting, squeezing together. Let's go ahead and adjust some of these parameters here and update preview. Let's do this over 6 frames instead of 20. There we go much quicker. Let's cancel out of that, let's go to the next one. Explode is the next one, let's make sure that I removed, ok it looks like the timeline effects are all gone. I like to start with fresh new graphics to demonstrate the new timeline effect as you'll run into trouble if you try to add two timeline effects to the same objects. So next we have explode and notice that it's grayed out because I think I either didn't select, yeah it looks like I didn't select the key frame there. Let's choose explode. This gives the illusion of an object exploding, elements of text or a complex group of objects such as symbols, shapes or video clips, break apart, spin and arc outward. That brings us to the transform effect, let me go ahead and apply this one to the text element, insert timeline effects, transform, this adjusts the position, scale, rotation, alpha and tint of the selected elements. You'll want to use this transform effect to apply a single effect or combination of effects to create fade ins, fade outs, fly ins, fly outs, grows and shrinks, spin left and spin right effects. Let's go ahead and spin this, 45 degrees there, and the last timeline effects, are transitions. These are gonna create transitions as you have in a lot of video programs such as fades or wipes. Here's an update preview of a fade where it's fading in and compare that to a wipe. Here's the wipe and also choose the direction of the wipe. Let's go up on that wipe, notice that it's revealing the text from the up direction. Here's the left direction. And that'll conclude this section of the tutorial on creating motion tween animations in Flash. In this section you've been introduced to the basic motion tweening technique and you've used it to animate the alpha of symbols and text as well as the color and the sizes of symbols and text. You've learned how to rotate and spin objects using rotate and spin animations as well as how to tween effects. You've learned how to add motion guide tweening to your Flash movies as well as how to customize the ease in and ease out settings of your motion tweens. And this section concluded with timeline effects including this movie providing a survey of the timeline effects available in Flash CS3.