opening .fla in after effects. frames missing, not working properly.

[prints_of_george]

Hi, I'm opening a very intense .fla project (large complex drawings and animation, but no fx) in after effects.
I've done this for years with simpler projects and it always works fine.

However, with my current project whenever I import a .fla into after effects - it opens as a composition, I see all my layers - but random frames on random layers are missing. So the playback becomes very flickery as half the frames on a layer disapear. When I pause the playback and scrub through the AE timeline those same frames are still missing/invisible.

When I export the .fla file as a single SWF it is fine, but obviously I cant edit the individual layers like this.

Has anyone experienced this?

The only solution I can think of is to export every broken layer as a PNG sequence, which isn't ideal

Specs: MBP sonoma, Animate 24.0.0 , After Effects 24.1.0

[kglad]

how many frames on your longest timeline?

[prints_of_george]

Hi, the longest layer in .fla is probably around 800 frames. Could that be the issue?

[prints_of_george]

I cut the .fla down to 350 frames total length on the longest layers and the problem is still occuring unfortunately. I went into the library and deleted anything over 350 frames and it doesnt make a difference, very odd

[kglad]

no, 800 frames is not close to the 16,000 frame limit.

[prints_of_george · Accepted solution]

I solved the problem by using the old publish, archive swf option. I assumed this wouldnt work because it seems to be doing the same thing that AE does upon importing a .fla. However it does actually work perfectly. Must be a bug with the importing .fla feature.
Thanks for your help!

[kglad]

you import the swf into ae and edit it there?

[prints_of_george]

I exported every layer as an individual swf in Animate by clicking on FILE going to PUBLISH SETTINGS then ticking the box for archive, this creates a zip file containing every layer as an individual swf. I then imported these into after effects and it worked perfectly. I made sure to select the publish options 'optimise for after effects' and 'do not optimise/reduce'

[kglad]

@prints_of_george 

thank you for that solution.

for others, 

[prints_of_george]

 these are the settings I used. I un-ticked 'compress movies' and ticked 'optimise for after effects'. I assume these are the settings that SWF archive uses, but I'm not certain.

[kglad]

thank you, again.