Open the Make a Flash Movie of the Storyboard dialog box

1. With Presentation mode off, select Story > Storyboard to open the Storyboard interface.
2. On the Storyboard interface, click Create.
3. Select Flash Presentation from Slides. The Make a Flash Movie of the Storyboard dialog box opens.
   

Change the layout of the Flash movie

By default, a Flash movie looks similar to the following, with slide thumbnails placed horizontally in one line across the top of the screen.

You can change this in the Make a Flash Movie of the Storyboard dialog box as described in the following procedures.

To display thumbnails horizontally or vertically across the movie:

• In the Layout Templates panel on the left side of the dialog box, select Top & Bottom or Left & Right.

To separate slides into groups:

• In the Slide Assignment panel on the right side of the dialog box, select which slides go into which group by clicking the radio buttons in the Template Group columns.

  For example, in a Top & Bottom layout, select the radio buttons in the T (Top) and B (Bottom) columns. In a Left & Right layout, select the radio buttons in the L (Left) and R (Right) columns.

To place all slides into one group:

• Under Slide Assignment, click the appropriate Template Group column header. All the radio buttons in that column are selected.

  For example, in a Top & Bottom layout, click the B column header to assign all slides to the bottom group.

To assign names to the groups:

1. Enter names in the label fields in the Layout Templates panel.

   The names can describe the organization of your slides. For example if you have three slides that show material alternatives, and three that show different environments, you could name the top group “Materials” and the bottom group “Environments.”

2. To change the font in which the names will be displayed, click the font button in the Slide Assignment panel, under Slide Name. (By default this button displays the current font; for example “Tacoma 9.”) Browse to the font you want and click OK.

To exclude slides from the movie:

• Deselect them in the Slide Assignment panel. To select or deselect all slides, click the check box at the top of the slide column, beside “Thumbnail.”

Customize navigation controls in a movie

You can specify whether or not you want to be able to hide navigation controls in the Flash movie. Do this in the Make a Flash Movie of the Storyboard dialog box as described in the following procedures.

To assign a hotkey that shows or hides a slide group in a movie:

1. Under the appropriate group Label field, select Hide/show group on hotkey.
2. Select a hotkey from the drop-down box below the label field.

When you watch the movie, you will be able to toggle visibility of the slide group using the hotkey you selected.

You can set the playback controls to hide or show based on the proximity of the mouse to the lower part of the playback window. Do this as follows:

• Select Auto-hide playback controls.

Create the Flash movie

This section describes how to adjust output settings and create your movie from the Make a Flash Movie of the Storyboard dialog box.

To adjust quality settings:

1. Click Quality Settings.
2. Adjust settings in the Video Quality Settings dialog box.

   The controls available to you are also used when creating movies from shots, with the following exceptions:

   • You can only save to Flash (SWF) format.
   • You cannot add compression.

   See Create a movie of one or all shots for more information.

To create the movie:

1. Optional: In the Make a Flash Movie of the Storyboard dialog box, enter a title in the Presentation name box. This will be used as the default file name in the next step.
2. Click the Save Movie button and browse to the location where you want to save the movie.
3. Optional: Enter a new file name for the movie.
4. Click Save.

The movie is saved as a Flash (SWF) file in the location you specified, along with an accompanying HTML file. A sub-folder is created with the name mymovie-presentation. This folder contains movie frame JPG files and a folder that contains the thumbnail images. The folder, the SWF file, and the HTML file must be in the same folder for the presentation to work.

Play the movie:

To open the movie, double-click the HTML file. If you have never opened an SWF file in your browser, you may be prompted to install the Flash plug-in.

To play a slide, click its thumbnail or click the Play button on the bottom left of the screen.

Click the loop icon in the bottom right corner of the page to switch between the following settings:

• Play the current slide once.
• Play the current slide repeatedly.
• Play all slides in sequence repeatedly.

To ‘scrub’ through the movie, drag the slider at the bottom of the screen to the left or right.