Adobe After Effects - Manual (Page 739)

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Rasterize To
Note:
This video from the After Effects CS5: Learn By Video series demonstrates export to XFL.
Exporting a composition to XFL format
1. To export the selected composition as an XFL file, choose File > Export > Adobe Flash Professional (XFL).
2. In the Adobe Flash Professional (XFL) Settings dialog box, choose what After Effects will do with layers with unsupported features:
Layers with unsupported features are not included in the XFL output.
Layers with unsupported features are rasterized. This means that the layers are rendered to a bitmap format (an FLV file or a
sequence of PNG images). Vectors are not preserved. This preserves the appearance of the layer when the XFL file is used in Flash
Professional. When rasterizing to a PNG sequence, identical adjacent frames are rasterized only once, to a single PNG file that is referenced
multiple times.
3. (Optional) Click the Format Options button and modify the settings used for creating PNG sequences or FLV files.
If you click Format Options when FLV is chosen in the Format menu, the export settings dialog box opens. Though you can modify such
items as the bit rate, in general you won’t need to change many settings in this dialog box. Changes that you make in this dialog box persist
and are used for subsequent export operations, so be careful about what you change.
If you make a change to the format options that you would like to undo, click the Reset To Defaults button in the Adobe Flash Professional
(XFL) Settings dialog box.
4. In the Export As Adobe Flash Professional (XFL) dialog box, choose a location for the output files.
As the composition is being processed, a dialog box shows the progress of the export operation.
When After Effects creates an XFL file, it also saves a report ([XFLfile_name] report.html) to the same folder as the XFL file. The report indicates
the following:
whether layers with unsupported features were rasterized or ignored
whether each source item was rasterized (“rendered”) or passed through (“linked”)
whether each layer was rasterized (“rendered”) or converted to a native Flash object
Working in Flash Professional with a FLA document created from an XFL file
The Library panel in Flash Professional is similar to the Project panel in After Effects. When Flash Professional creates a FLA document from an
XFL file, it creates symbols, folders, and video clips and organizes them in the Library panel. Each item in the Library panel has a unique name—
even if they are based on items with identical names in After Effects—so that these items can be manipulated using ActionScript. This requirement
for unique naming causes After Effects to append underscore characters and numerals to many names when creating the XFL file.
When Flash Professional builds a FLA document from an XFL file that includes FLV files, the FLV files are embedded in the timeline in Flash.
Often, a more efficient way to construct a FLA document is to move the video files to an external location referenced by the SWF file to stream the
video. You can unembed FLV files as appropriate within Flash Professional, by deleting the video and importing it again using the FLVPlayback
component.
In After Effects, the composition’s timeline begins at frame 0. In Flash Professional, the timeline begins at frame 1. This difference causes
the After Effects composition timeline and the corresponding Flash timeline to appear to be offset from one another by one frame.
In After Effects, a composition can have pixel aspect ratios other than 1.0 (square pixels). Flash Professional only supports a pixel aspect ratio of
1.0. When a composition is exported to XFL format, the FLA document is a square-pixel document with a different number of pixels so that the
appearance of the document in Flash Professional matches the appearance of the composition in After Effects. Scale values in the XFL file
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