Importing video into Animate

[SimonDW]

Hi, I've been struggling (and failing) to import a short video into Animate. I'm using an Actionscript 3.0 file, and intend to export the final animation out as an mp4 via Media Encoder. I've looked at the support documentation, Googled how to do this and drawn a blank. I'm creating a short animation which relies on having the video in the background; I have tried converting from the original QuickTime file to mp4, H264, etc., all of which Animate turns its nose up at. I have tried to convert the mp4 to an flv and f4v as per the support documentation, but again, Animate pops up an error message to say it can't recognise the file. Media Encoder doesn't appear to have the ability to export out flv or f4v files either. The only way I can import a video is the 'Design-only' setting which is useless to me because Animate can't export it(!).

The super-frustrating thing here is that Animate has the facility to import video, whereas this seems impossible in practice.

Can anyone advise please? Many thanks!

[kglad]

how are you creating an flv?

[SimonDW]

Using an online converter to convert the mp4 (I can't see a way to do it via Media Encoder).

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

I suspect that the FLV that can be embedded needs to be On2 VP6, and H.264 based FLVs or F4V won't work out. If you did get that going the final quality would not be great. It would be better to use the design only MP4 approach, then export your animation with alpha transparency, and combine the two with Premier or After Effects. You could even use a lower quality version of the video in Animate, and combine it back with the high quality version later.

[SimonDW]

Ah thanks, I didn't realise there were different strains of FLV files — I was using Animate because After Effects seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut (I'm not doing any video editing as such, I just need the imported video to play in the background), and looks like it has a steep learning curve, whereas I used to use Flash pretty reguarly so Animate was familiar and easier to get to grips with. The more I look at this, the more I think you're right, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and try to get to grips with AE. Adobe might as well just deprecate the 'import a video' feature from Animate, sadly it doesn't seem fit for purpose. Sigh.

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

I wasn't suggesting to do the whole job in AE or Premiere! I know many people do switch between Animate and AE, depending on the nature of the animation. For your case I meant you should do the animation in the way you know how, and only use Premiere as a way to place your animation on top of the original high quality video, then export them to MP4, or whatever the final video needs to be in.

[SimonDW]

Ok — I see! Thanks Colin, that makes total sense. I'll give that a go. Thanks again for your responses, it's very much appreciated.