Export a Flash File as a Animated Gif

Flash has very basic movie exporting features (I know you want an animated gif, but Flash would create one by using the 'export movie' function). There are two important limiting factors. Firstly, only animation created on the stage using tweening and drawing functions will be exported. Flash creates a sequence of still pictures by exporting each of the frames in the main timeline. This means that *only* animation in the main timeline is used. You have nested movieclips containing animation *inside* other movieclips. You must take these 'hidden' animations and place them on your main timeline.

The second limitation is that animation created by actionscript commands cannot be exported in this way. Happily, your fla seems to only use drawn / tweened animation so this limitation does not seem to be an issue for this fla.

Once you have transplanted *all* of your animation in the main timeline, use 'File, export movie' and choose one of the image formats - I would use .png as it will not lose any image fidelity or colours.

You then need to import each of those images into whichever program you want to use to create your animated gif. I would use Adobe Fireworks if you have that. Use the help function and search for 'animated gif' and try and follow the procedure from there. If you get that far but struggle then, post your woes here and I will try and talk you through that part of the process (assuming you are using Fireworks to create your animated gif.)

This is easy, but animations inside a movieclip doesn't work, so i changed animation manually outside mc.
see attached.

Use .swf instead .gif is better. Look at quality and size. between them.

Hope it helps.
Best Regards
PRMS-Rotate.zip

@jonasgoz - I agree with you that a swf is a much more efficient way of delivering an animation, but I suspect that activematx needs to create an animated gif as an *alternative* to a swf - I'm guessing from the fla stage dimensions that this content is destined to be a web banner and that the ad serving company has requested a gif as an alternative format to deliver to devices that cannot play Flash.

@activematx - if my guess is right, you may have another issue to overcome. Often ad serving networks require that the *filesize* of the swf and gif be within certain limits. Animated gifs are *much less* efficient at creating animations with small filesizes than swfs. This means that if you follow the method I outlined above the filesize will likely reject the gif because it will be too large (filesize). If my guesses are correct, you may be better delivering a static gif rather than trying to animate it. 98% of your audience can view Flash content, so only 2% are likely to see the gif anyway, so I think that 2% of your audience may deserve 2% of your effort - in other words, a static gif.

Thank you guys for chiming in.  This is for a website that I am building for a client.  They keep changing the url that the banner points to.  This requires me to create a invisible button in flash so that they can point the website somewhere.

They requested a gif.  I understand the file size is large.

Thanks jonasgoz -- however, the file is a little "256 colors" looking... anyway to make this prettier?

Also is there anyway to keep only the left most:  width="394" height="103"

Not the entire banner.

I want it to look like this attached gif, but loop.

Okay experts,

I have accomplished my goal, but I really would like to do this natively from flash.  I had to use two different programs to get this to work.  The first program recorded my screen, and turned it into a gif.  The second program turned my gif into a gif that looped.

If I could learn how to do this from Flash, then I would be very happy.  Otherwise, you guys have helped me with your information thus far.

Attached is my results from using my two programs.

Take a look attached.
Do you need it like that?

Hope it helps
PRMS-Rotate.zip

The example above was made only with Flash CS3.

Goto -> File -> Export -> Movie -> will open a dialogBox, Choose .gif

Best Regards

jonasgoz you are awesome.  last question for you,

how did you get rid of the pre-loader?  I dont understand how you got all those layers.... when I orginally had two.

Thanks for the help.  You're a true asset to this community.  You really helped me out, and I learned a lot too.  Thanks