Camera Glitch on Publish/Test

[robinsonalexh]

I've recently returned to Flash (now Animate) after several (8+) years of using it. I am familiar with other programs involving camera rigging, animating, etc. -- even Adobe After Effects. But I am finding this camera to be horribly glitchy.

One of my shots works fine when previewed by scrubbing the timeline/playing in Animate, but when Testing/Publishing the camera is in the completely wrong position. I can see parts of the animation poking in from off-screen. When the scene is tested individually, it works fine, as does the scene prior. However, when I test the entire film to watch the scenes transition, there are major errors in the camera position.

Please advise. I've already tried deleted and recreating the camera positions and I'm still getting this same issue.

[Colin Holgate]

I have seen this issue, and discussed it in the Animate prerelease list. I can't find those messages right now!

I'm pretty sure there is a bug report about it, with reproducible content. Preran​, can you check if there is a bug report? I'll try to find the messages.

[Preran]

I am not sure, Colin. From what I know, almost all Camera issues have been addressed in the latest update. Let me check with the team and get back to you.

Thanks,

Preran

[Colin Holgate]

I found the discussion. It was in these forums, not the prerelease:

Enhanced layers not working when exporting?

The outcome may have been that the FLA had got into a confused state.

robinsonalexh​ - read that other topic and see if it is similar to your situation.

[robinsonalexh]

Converting to HTML5 is not an ideal solution, as its breaking up each of my shots into separate files, which is annoying. It's also not taking in my selected fonts, so I'm going to have to recreate all this stuff too.https://www.dropbox.com/s/b0onokmnswkph5r/cjc001-Endowment-00b.swf?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b0onokmnswkph5r/cjc001-Endowment-00b.swf?dl=0

I've linked the original FLA above so you can investigate it. Problems are with Shot 3 and Shot 4.

Problem exists both in Win 7 and Win 10.

Thanks!

[Colin Holgate]

Do you have the FLA link? I only see the SWF.

[robinsonalexh]

Dropbox - cjc001-Endowment-00b.fla

My bad, here you go.

[Colin Holgate]

I think I see what's wrong. If you do a Test Scene, and the camera isn't at 0,0 in that scene, it acts like it's at 0,0. Preran​ that's a bug to log.

An easy workaround is to do Test Movie instead, then the problem doesn't happen. But of course you would grow tired of watching the earlier scenes while reviewing the later scenes!

If you make a new layer in scene 1, add a key frame on frame 2, and in the Actions panel add this code:

gotoAndPlay(1,"Shot 4 - OB - 447f");

you can then do a Test Movie, and jump straight to scene 4, in this example. Change the text to be the name of the scene you want to play from.

[Preran]

Thanks for letting me know, Colin. I have asked the team to have a look. We will log a bug after investigation.

[Colin Holgate]

By the way, that script is useful if you need to review the end of a long scene too. You could do this:

gotoAndPlay(400,"Shot 4 - OB - 447f");

to just watch the last two seconds of scene 4.

[robinsonalexh]

The only problem is it seems you're addressing the opposite of what my problem is.

When I Test Scene the camera works just fine; however, when I Test Movie, the camera movement and position is reset to 0,0 as you mentioned. Is it working the other way for you when you attempt to test the scene individually?

I mean, in the end I could work around this by exporting each scene separately I suppose, but it sounds like a hassle, and I'm currently unable to watch the entire thing through from start to finish.

[Colin Holgate]

No, with Test Scene, scene 4 has all of its content out of view. With Test Movie, and waiting to watch the first three scenes, scene 4 is ok.

There have been some camera fixes in recent versions. Are you using 18.0.1 (build 115)?

[robinsonalexh]

I am running that current build. How could we have such drastically different experiences here, lol. I would much prefer the way it's acting with you, than its acting with me, because I'm trying to understand the timing of each scene and how they flow together, so Test Movie is important.

Is there something I'm missing. Is the .FLA able to be interpreted by humans in a way that I could perhaps diagnose? I've never opened one in a text editor before.

[robinsonalexh]

It does not appear to be interpretable by humans, lol. I thought I had seen someone talking about errors with the XML DOM or something, with regard to cameras, so I didn't know if aspects of this could be debugged.

[robinsonalexh]

Sorry I'm posting so much.

I'm finding that the issue seems to revolve around going from one scene with Advanced Layers to one without Advanced Layers. By simply re-arranging the scenes I was able to get the results I'm looking for. It seems simple now, but apparently previous scene's camera setups are affecting the following scenes.

[Colin Holgate]

It would not surprise me if advanced layers was a one time thing in the published SWF. Does the first scene have advanced layers turn on? Maybe try turning it on there, see if that's enough to make later scenes happy.

If you are able to isolate a small repeatable example file, it could be good to log a bug, and give the file as an example:

Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[Mohanaraj · Accepted solution]

Hi,

We are able to reproduce the issue at our end and raised a bug to track this. Will update you once the issue is fixed. Thanks!