Flash® Catalyst™ CS5 Bible

Chapter 13. Adding Multimedia

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Adding Flash SWF files to your project

• Importing video

• Controlling a video player

• Importing and playing sound

Catalyst projects are imported into Flash Builder 4, where you or a Flex developer add the necessary coding to create connections to back-end services, add additional ActionScript, and otherwise finalize the project.

The finalized project is compiled into an SWF for viewing in Flash Player. You may already be familiar with SWF files, as it is the same file type that results from publishing a movie in Flash Professional. A Catalyst or Flex project is really nothing more than a Flash movie, and just like Flash movies created in Flash Professional, these projects can contain multimedia assets.

Adding SWFs to Your Project

While no direct round-trip editing capabilities exist between Flash Catalyst and Flash Professional, any SWF created in Flash Professional can be imported into Catalyst (see Figure 13.1).

Note

The Flex framework only supports ActionScript 3.0, the most current version of the language. Flash Professional supports the creation of projects that use ActionScript 2.0, as well as ActionScript 3.0. ActionScript 2.0 projects may be imported into Catalyst, but you will be unable to control them from your Catalyst project. Therefore, it is recommended that any movie from Flash Professional that you plan to use in a Catalyst or Flex project be created using ActionScript 3.0.

Figure 13.1. A Catalyst project with an imported SWF movie ...