Flash glitches, could use some advice!

Hello boys and girls,
my progress on my latest cartoon has become incredibly slow of late, due to two flash bugs which have been annoying the ass out of me.

1. After about a minute of work, the whole program shuts down and gives me the "Adobe Flash CS3 has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." message. Because of this, I've had to save every ten seconds while working, and as the file is reasonably large, it takes about 5 seconds to save. You can imagine how much this slows me down.

I've tried reducing the levels of undo to 20, but that doesn't help. I've tried working on an empty file; that has the same issue, so the file being to large can't be to blame.

2. As I preview the cartoon in flash player, both separately or within my browser, it gradually loses audio sync. By about 2 minutes in it's too far off to ignore. I've tried increasing the bit rate of the audio, but that doesn't seem to help.

Any ideas? HELP ME ASOFUSHBOEPIBVSJRH

If my two voice actors are reading this, it may be a while before you see the fruit of your labours. I am gradually working through it though. Probably about half way atm. Sorry fellas!

Thanks guys.

P.S. Beneath is a screenshot of one of the characters voiced by Tomamoto.

UPDATE: Now I can't find my Adobe CS3 discs, so reinstallation is a small problem. Shall keep looking lololo

UPDATE #2: I'm going to cautiously say these issues have been resolved. It occured to me that when I was testing blank files to see if they also caused the program shut down, I may have left the original cartoon open in a separate tab like a dumb skank. I tried copying all of the frames to a new file, and it seems to be working well. The sync problem seems to be manageable by increasing the bit rate by a ridiculous degree, but I'll have to find another way later on so as to limit the file size. THANKS LADIES.

TL;DR - FIXED THANKS LADIES.

Flash glitches, could use some advice!

Comments

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MindChamber 2011-01-05 20:47:38

how long is the cartoon? did you pass the 16k framelimit?

you might have to break the cartoon into Movieclips and chain them together via code.

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-05 20:47:38

The cartoon is 4769 frames long at 18 fps on the main timeline, broken in to four scenes. I don't really know how to find the true length including frames within symbols, but I can pretty much guarantee it's no more than 8000. So far it's about 4 minutes long.

I'll have a go with your movieclip idea, seems like it has potential. Thanks for the advice!

P.S. I thought that if you pass the 16k framelimit the whole cartoon would just stop. Could it possibly instead cause the sync issues I've been experiencing? Or are you referring to the program shutting down glitch?

Miccool 2011-01-05 21:15:26

For the 2nd one.. did you set the audio quality to 64+ kbps in Properties > Publish settings > Flash > set audio. I find that sometimes fixes it. I don't know why though

Miccool 2011-01-05 21:16:12

k fuck I really need to start reading entries more carefully before posting, my bad.

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-05 21:16:12

No problem my man, I'll give it another go anyway.

JackSmack 2011-01-05 22:44:59

Another thing that works for audio sync is breaking up the audio file into segments.

Other than that, I would recommend uninstalling and resinstalling flash to fix the crashing issue, also you can make sure that you have emptied your recycling bin to clear up your virtual memory. Sometimes I have to do that when it goes sideways.

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-05 22:44:59

That is a good fucking idea sir. I can't believe reinstalling never occured to me. lorl

Thanks, I'll have a go.

ImpendingRiot 2011-01-05 22:51:03

Something I've had success with before when Flash was acting up is copying all of the keyframes on your time line and then pasting them in to a new .fla

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-05 22:51:03

Indeed, I've done this before too. Unfortunately, the problem is occuring in all of my flash files, so it won't work this time. Thanks for responding!

Shadowii2 2011-01-05 23:34:26

Instead of using long audio segments on the timeline, try to break them up into smaller bits and then chain them together in Flash. Long audio things easily seem to get off sync.

For the flash crashing, my only suggestion is to just reinstall Flash. If the crashing doesn't seem to be exclusive to that bigger .FLA of yours, it must be Flash itself. After reinstalling try to copy the contents of that .FLA into an empty one and save it with an another name.

Haven't had difficulties like these in a long while, but those methods above seem to be the better options to try if stuff like this happens.

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-05 23:34:26

Thanks, will definately try the reinstallation. Each line of dialogue in my toon is a separate audio file, maximum twenty seconds.

Thanks for the advice.

Gerkinman 2011-01-05 23:41:58

From my experience flash does all kinds of weird crap for no apparent reason. Flash CS3 was super buggy too, not that CS4 or CS5 are much better. It sounds like there might be a corrupt asset which ive had in the past, pretty much crashed flash when ever i tried to work on one particular scene.

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-05 23:41:58

I know what you mean; usually Flash Fucks (As I call them) aren't that much of an issue, but these ones are particularly nasty.

Thanks!

TheBoogley 2011-01-06 02:43:15

whenever this happens to me I copy and paste all of the frames to a new file, it's worked for me every time even with really long animations... I hope it does for you! Otherwise I would just put a bullet in your computer and walk away with your head held high :)

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-06 02:43:15

BUT THEN I WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO TALK TO YOOOOOOUUUUUUUU

Xyresic 2011-01-06 07:38:49

There's probably an imported file in your library thats screwing it up, if you copied it into a new fla file. Maybe try re-importing the audio or something.

MiddleFingerRings 2011-01-06 07:38:49

Shall have to investigate this, thank you.