Flash Snapshot Application – an AIR/Flickr/Moo mashup
May 27th, 2008
There’s lots of fun to be had with Moo mini-cards, and I’ve been getting good feedback on the batch of fractal cards I made recently, which were created by taking snapshots of one of my flash experiments. The magic behind this was so simple I may as well share it with you. All you need to create your own set is the Flex/AIR app I created, which you can download here, and a Flickr account. This is how it works:
You give the app the path to your swf, and hit enter. It then runs a function to start a timed loop, as follows:
private var _saveDir:File; private var _timer:Timer; private var _counter:int; private function startSnapshot(url:String, time:Number = 5):void { // loadedSwf is the name of the mx:Image that // will contain the swf loadedSwf.source = url; // create a directory to store our snapshots var dirName:String = "snapshots"; _saveDir = File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath(dirName); var x:Number = 1; while (_saveDir.exists) { _saveDir = File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath(dirName + String(x++)); } _saveDir.createDirectory(); // start loop _counter = 1; _timer = new Timer(time * 1000); _timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, snapLoop); _timer.start(); }
Then, while the swf plays, the timer loop fires this function every few seconds to take a snapshot:
private function snapLoop(e:TimerEvent):void { // create a new BitmapData object based on the // size of the loaded swf var BMPData:BitmapData = new BitmapData(loadedSwf.width, loadedSwf.height, true, 0xFFFFFF); // take a snapshot of the swf, and store it in // the BitmapData object BMPData.draw(loadedSwf); // encode it as a jpg var jpgEncoder:JPEGEncoder = new JPEGEncoder(80); var jpgBytes:ByteArray = jpgEncoder.encode(BMPData); // save it var ourFile:File = _saveDir.resolvePath("snap" + _counter++ + ".jpg"); var fileStream:FileStream = new FileStream(); fileStream.open(ourFile, FileMode.WRITE); fileStream.writeBytes(jpgBytes, 0, jpgBytes.length); fileStream.close(); }
Note that the BitmapData snap may give unexpected results with transparent swfs, so it is best used with swfs that have a solid background.
Once you have a folder full of snapshots, upload these to Flickr. For this example I pointed the app at a local version of my favourite fractal experiment swf, to produce this set of images.
To turn these into mini-cards, the final step is to use Moo’s Flickr import option. Point it at the Flickr set you have created, pay your money, and in 10 days or so a pack of groovy cards pop through the postbox. Simple.
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