August 16, 2002

REVIEW: ADOBE AMX (PDF)

One Company

A c r o s s

Across market segments Across geographic borders

Across product lines

1. 2.

3. 4.

geographic borders

5. 6.

market segments

product lines

One Company

One Company

One Company One Company

One Company

geographi

product lines

Across geographic borders

Ten Second Video & Flash Animation Storyboard

Exi t

The animation storyboarded above would be rendered for

video & Flash. For the Flash version, the final frame (6.),

will serve as the home page & main navigation for a mini

web site.

Animating for video & the web simultaneously using Adobe AMX file exchange

Producing content once, and repurposing it for multiple

distribution channels is always a challenge. Formats,

frame rates and file sizes are different for each medium

and constantly evolving. As media converge, motion

graphic designers are demanding software tools that

integrate with one another. Adobe offers a promising

solution for bridging the gap between the online and

offline worlds with its new Live Motion (AMX) export

feature in After Effects 5.5. I tested it recently for a

corporate project I was undertaking in hopes of

developing an efficient pipeline for producing a video

animation that could be repurposed and expanded for use

as a Flash mini site, as well as a laptop presentation.

Step 1. Storyboard: The storyboard at the right was

created using Adobe Illustrator and signed off on by the

client. Care was taken to use a clean graphic style that

would export well to the Web. On approval, each

storyboard frame was enlarged to 720 x 480. Care was

taken to put each element on a separate layer.

Step 2. Animation: The

Illustrator files were then

imported into After Effects

as a composition, thus

retaining each layer and

the animation was

created.

Step 3. Export in .amx Format: At this point, the video

version of the animation was complete. I then exported

the animation in the Adobe .amx format to add

interactivity. If I had simply wanted to use this as an

animation without adding interactivity, I would have

simply exported it from After Effects in Flash (.swf)

format.

Step 4. Add Interactivity: In

Adobe Live Motion 2, I opened

the .amx file. All of the layers

and timeline information was

retained. Since the two

timeliness are similar, but not

exactly the same, there were a

few surprises. There was

nothing that couldn't be

tweaked, however. I then

shortened the animation and

added interactive rollovers and

linked them to new pages of

information.

Step 5. Export as Flash (.swf): Upon completion, I

then exported the final composition as a .swf for

integration into Web site. I also created a separate

version for the laptop presentation with less

compression because file size was no longer an issue.

Conclusion: For this project, this pipeline worked

well. While Macromedia's Flash MX is a very

popular authoring tool, Adobe has come up with a

compelling reason to choose Live Motion 2 instead

for projects that originate in its ever popular After

Effects 5.5.

By Phil Price

Phil Price Digital Media

phil@pricedigital.com

market segme