Software Review

DVD 2: Flash MX Basics

Produced by:

Bay Area Video Coalition
2727 Mariposa Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco,CA 94110
http://www.bavc.org
http://www.bavc.org/training/dvd/

Distributed by:
Cambridge Educational
PO Box 931
Monmouth Jct, NJ 08852-0931
800-468-4227
http://www.cambridgeeducational.com

Price: $99




There’s nothing quite like curling up with an iBook on a cold winter evening and clicking thru an interactive training DVD on Flash MX. This newly released training DVD has a lot going for it. Having gone thru the 12 lessons on the DVD, I now know quite a lot about Flash. I’m still a Flash novice, though. It’s one thing knowing “about a program” and quite another “knowing how to use” it. I’d love to see a follow-up training DVD, “20 Simple Flash Projects You Can Do and Learn From.” Something along the lines of the step-by-step simple Flash project described in the December, 2002, issue of MacAddict magazine.

This DVD requires that you have Flash MX installed on your computer. If you don’t own Flash MX, you can download a free 30-day trial from the Macromedia web site. 30 days is ample time to progress thru the lessons on this DVD. It took me about 60 to 90 minutes to move thru each lesson. (Note: Flash MX is the version of Flash that follows Flash 5. You’ll sometimes hear Flash MX referred to informally as Flash 6.)

I tested this DVD on my iMac DV Special Edition (Mac OS 9.2.2) and on my combo-drive iBook (Mac OS 10.1.4). Flash MX (and the lessons) ran great on my iMac. Flash MX quit repeatedly with Mac OS 10.1.4. An upgrade to Mac OS 10.2 cured that issue.

What’s good and not good about this DVD? What’s good about the DVD is the high production level of the DVD. The lessons are well written and delivered with skilled voice narration. The accompanying “mouse movement” animations that are shown in the lessons are helpful, although at times the window size of the mouse-movement animations seems a bit cramped. If the mouse-movement animation is too fast for you, you can click on a button below the animation to repeat it. I found the speed of the mouse-movement animations was just right for me.

I liked the fact that the narration in the lessons alternated between a woman and man’s voice. It can be tiring listening to the same voice for hours on end. The voice narration is as polished and professional as can be. The voice narration is not entirely identical to the presented text in the lessons, which makes for a more interesting learning experience.

Each of the lessons is followed by quiz questions that reinforce the teaching in the lessons. I have to admit, I skipped the quizzes in my eagerness to move on to the next lesson. Do I need to stay after class? Generally speaking, the quizzes are a great way to check that you understood what was covered in the lesson. I heartily approve (and heartily skipped over) the quizzes. Mea culpa.

While the lessons are being presented, Flash MX is loaded and sitting in the background. It’s easy to jump from the lessons window into Flash, and then back to the lessons. The lessons keep track of your progress, so if you quit the lessons at a certain point, the next time you start, the program will ask you if you want to continue where you left off. Nice touch.

At one point in the DVD I chortled when I spotted a slight discrepancy between the presented text and the voice narration. On reflection, one or two small mistakes does not detract from the quality of this DVD. It’s fair to say this training DVD is almost flawless.

What’s Covered on this DVD

Flash veterans must be chafing at the bit wanting to know what's covered on this DVD. Here's a summary of the material covered on the DVD: Creating & Modifying Content, Importing and the Library, Using Symbols, Working With Layers, Animation and the Timeline, Interactivity With Buttons, Sound and Video, Basic Action Script, Working
Efficiently, and Publishing Your Work. I found this DVD makes it easy to skip over skills I already know how to do and concentrate on the skils I’d like to learn. I also appreciated the many helpful Flash tips the DVD includes that might not be found in the Flash manual or anywhere else.

The Videos and Other Bonus Material on the DVD

This DVD comes with some nice bonus videos that are viewable using computers with DVD drives (or on a standard consumer DVD player using a remote control to navigate thru the interactive menus.) For starters, there’s about 10 minutes of talking-head videos from various Flash instructors at the Bay Area Video Coalition. These videos discuss the process of designing Flash movies and explain the difference between a “Flash designer” and a “Flash developer.” A big plus is that the videos include beautiful people of color. The videos put the training materials on this DVD into context. After watching the videos, you can’t help but say to yourself, “I’m pumped up to learn Flash!”

Also on this DVD are interesting video clips from women leaders in a range of technology careers. These videos are part of a larger video archive titled “Girl Geeks.” Thumbs up. Worthy viewing.

An unexpected but welcome surprise on this DVD are videos showing how to do yoga exercises at your office desk. These videos fit in nicely with the rest of the DVD, because people who work on video or multimedia projects can quite easily become so absorbed in the projects that they forget about body needs such as cramped or fatigued muscles.

The interactive videos on this DVD were likely assembled using Apple’s DVD Studio Pro. At one point I became so intrigued with the videos and how they were presented that I thought to myself, “Forget about Flash. DVD Studio Pro is what I really want to learn.”

The truth is that Flash is a program that holds great promise for multimedia storytellers. It’s a program that can be used for marketing, for making mock-ups of architectural models, for interactive kiosks in museums, for making web sites come alive and for a thousand other uses. Flash’s learning curve is admittedly steep. This interactive DVD has helped me scale at least half the mountain. I can’t quite see the summit yet, but I know I’m at least half way to the top.

The icing on the cake for me with this training DVD was some very useful links to web sites with Flash resources. On some of these web sites it’s possible to download many FLA files (Flash source files) to see how other people create the Flash movies they make. There is a huge Flash community out there and this interactive DVD is the best doorway I know of for walking into that community. Here in the Washington DC-area there is a group that meets once a month just to talk and show each other Flash techniques. (The DC-Area Flash Users Group.)


Footnote: As I was finishing writing this review I ran into a technical issue with Flash MX repeatedly quitting on my iBook (with Mac OS 10.2.1.) The issue arose when I was changing the background music for the lessons. Most of the background music selections on this DVD are pleasing to the ear and I suggest not changing the music until this technical issue is addressed with the next release (or upgrade) to Flash MX.


You can view a QuickTime screen capture of Flash MX Basics at http://www.zvideo.org/flashmxbasics1.mov
This file is 22.7 megs in size and best viewed with a broadband Internet connection.


Phil Shapiro
The reviewer is the former president of the Virginia Macintosh Users Group and a multimedia storyteller. He can be reached at pshapiro@his.com and http://www.his.com/pshapiro/