[EDIT: This post applies to Flash 8 only. Flash 9 has a different way of handling stage quality]
This is something that is not very well documented, so I thought I’d point it out here.
By default Flash will publish your movie at quality=”high”. Setting the quality setting to “best” is a good idea if you are doing any scaling or rotating of images. Leaving the quality as high can lead to artifacting and jaggies as seen in the tests below.
Set your movie’s quality settings in Publish Settings -> HTML -> Quality.
| [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/quality_test/qual_h.swf” width=”200″ height=”200″ fversion=”8″ bgcolor=”#ffffff”/] | [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/quality_test/qual_b.swf” width=”200″ height=”200″ fversion=”8″ bgcolor=”#ffffff”/] |
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Great tip. That’s something I’ve always hated when dealing with scaled images.
thanks, never thought this would be possible!
that’s some A class tip 🙂
Hi,
Is it relevant with Simpleviewer? By default, the quality is set to high?
Thx
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Flash Quality – “Best” Mode is Better Setting the quality setting to “bestâ€? is a good idea if you are doing any scaling or rotating of im […]
I can’t believe it… all these years. I always wondered why animating with bitmaps looked so jagged. Thanks for the tip!
Caveat: Best causes the slowest playback
Good tip, also from Wendy about this setting causing the slowest playback.
Amazing! Great tip. Thank you!
GREAT TIP!!!!
But… it only works inside the HTML… if I watch the movie as swf on the player the artifacts survive… is that normal? Am I doing something wrong?
Great tip, but I too would like to know about inside HTML or alone in the .SWF file. Great tip, though.
dave
the default quality level in Flash player is “high”, and best can not be selected. why is this? macrodobe needs to address.
my mistake!
if you want to publish a standalone .swf or .exe at best quality, add this to your first frame: this._quality = “best”;
I agree best is better
Really amazing tip!! Thanks a lot.
Hmm… tried setting it in Publish Settings, and inserting that code… but it plays the same..?
try: _quality = “BEST”;
Be careful using this code as it uses more processor power to up the quality. The quality setting in flash is actually the anti-aliasing settings for the player. I forget what the low and medium settings are, but I know the “BEST” setting calculates the pixels displayed based on a 2×2 grid, whereas the “high” setting calculates on a 4×4 grid. Better quality, but you sacrifice available processor power (especially critical if you are doing any kind of particle generation using images).
I was wondering if you’ve tried this in Flash 8, it doesn’t seem to have the same pronounced effect as it does in earlier verisons.
Further to what Troy asked, does this have any effect in FP9? I note that the right click menu of Flash 9 only gives low medium and high as options, no best. (I don’t know whether that was the case with flash 8)
We’re having issues with font aliasing which is why I’m asking!
How do you get it to work for DYNAMICALLY loaded jpgs? I put the _quality=”BEST”; EVERYWHERE and still the resized images (to smaller than the original file size) get the jagged look… even when they are not moving and just staying still!
Help me out somebody! Because http://www.manipulator.com has seemed to solve that issue…
you know what… it only doesn’t work for Flash 8!!! Like what Troy said. Very weird. Does anybody know a way around it?
Getting it working in Flash 8:
Some user comments on the live documentation have pointed out that the _quality setting is ignored by bitmaps that aren’t attached with actionscript.
If you’ve added the image in Flash itself, you need to go to the library, right click the image, and check “Allow Smoothing”.
This will allow the bitmap to inherit smoothing.
Care of subSE7EN over at http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flash/8/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00001791.html
Great tip !
http://www.AJan.cn
Boys and girls, publish as Flash 7, and it works fine, you still need best, but it solves the issue, without using the very slow smooth feature.
Cheers
Danny.. YOU ROCK! thanks!! geeeeeez!
good! iam glad to see you!
~_~
I wonder what kind of projects you’re all in that you find the setting “BEST” a good tip? My experience is that it’s quite better to smooth external images using Bitmap Data rathter than just setting the quality to “BEST”.
@Simon: you are right for Flash 9 and up. I edited the post to indicate this applies to Flash 8 only.
This is a great tip. I have been working on some project using high quality images that required really superior results and i just wasn’t getting what i needed no matter how i maniputalated the images before importing…thanks a ton. k8
Felix, I’m interested in the “quality” setting, as described in this article. I realize your note says it only applies to Flash Player 8, but the HTML tab of the Publish Settings dialog box continues to feature this parameter. When I view source on this page, I see that you’re using two different SWFs, which makes me wonder if your test actually configures this setting via ActionScript.
Neither of your HTML code blocks uses a “quality” PARAM tag for EMBED tag attribute, so I’m wondering if you’ve been able to duplicate this test with HTML alone? In theory, it should be possible, but I can’t seem to smooth bitmaps without using ActionScript of asset properties in the library — regardless what version of Flash Player I use.
Hi, I also ran into this issue. After trying the “BEST” fix, it did not seem to fix my problem. I did, however discover an option to “allow smoothing” in the properties of that bitmap (right click on the bitmap in library and select properties). That seems to have really cleaned up my animation. Thanks for this idea, I know it must be helping too.
I was looking for a way to smooth the jagged edges on photos that I was tweening. Instead of adjusting the quality in the publishing settings above I went into the Library. right click on your photo and get the Properties. If you check motion smoothing it will make your animations (with photos) look so much better. You can get the movie size down even more by using jpeg compression.