Question : Older Flash document potential issues

Greetings experts,

I am a novice at Flash and I got a flash website template recently but after working with it for the past week or so, I have some misgivings about it.  Incidently, I'm using Flash CS4.

First, I notice that it's created using Flash 8, AS1.  Second, the original .fla was, I thought, a rather large file at 49.9mb -- the swf file it produces is 1.78mb.

When first tried to save it after making some changes, Flash prompted me stating it was going to save it as CS4.  I clicked yes and ulimately it choked; after over 5 minutes of working on it I just quite the program.  Next, I tried to save it as CS3.  I got a prompt warning me that the XMP file info dialogs' metadata would be lost; I continued anyway.  This time I had better luck and after probably 3 minutes of chewing on it, the document saved successfully.   The fla size however now came in at 90mb while its swf file came in at 3.64mb ... keep in mind I did ad another swf move to it with a file size of 4.63mb.  Even still, the increase in the fla seemed to be out of proportion at to me.

I decided to try two things: change the publishing settings and save and compact.  I changed the publishing settings to Flash 10 but kept it at AS1 (mistake?).  Then I tried save and compact and after about 3 minutes, saved successfully reducing the fla to 46.6mb.  Problem is, the swf it produces increased in size to 5.85mb!

So basically I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong or if I've gotten a rotten fla?  My specific questions are:

*What (if any) are the potential problems using an fla file created in Flash 8, AS1?  Would it be recommended to redo it in AS3 and if so, how potentially difficult would this be?
*This Flash does not use XML for the content ... is such a thing difficult to incorporate?
*Are the large fla file sizes abnormal or perhaps indicative of a problem?  How big is too big for an swf?
*What is an XMP file and how important is it?

Thanks for the help.

Answer : Older Flash document potential issues

templates always suck, IMHO :/

AS1 is bad, but if you're not developing directly yourself it doesn't matter much.  performance is much improved in the later AS releases, but again it probably won't matter that much.  remember the VM is only responsible for the speed at which instructions are processed and graphics are rendered - it won't be slower downloading images/files (where the vast majority of delay occurs) or reacting to UI events.

anyways:

*What (if any) are the potential problems using an fla file created in Flash 8, AS1?  Would it be recommended to redo it in AS3 and if so, how potentially difficult would this be?

no real problems, if you're not developing.  if you want to change stuff, it won't be as easy, or add new functionality - a lot of the newer bells and whistles just aren't available in AS1.  you can really "redo it" in AS3 - you'd really need to start from scratch.

*This Flash does not use XML for the content ... is such a thing difficult to incorporate?

yes, it would be difficult.   you'd have to develop that yourself (or hire someone), and redevelop the existing logic to load and accept the external data.

*Are the large fla file sizes abnormal or perhaps indicative of a problem?  How big is too big for an swf?

i wouldn't say that's terribly abnormal for a template (which are always poorly constructed and bloated).  how big is too big?  that's up to you - there are tons of download guides on the net that tell you how long a file of a certain size will take a user depending on their connection (e.g., http://www.numion.com/calculators/time.html - never used it, just googled it up and took the first one that looked appropriate).  that said, for most users, flash will begin to play as soon as it can, before the entire file is downloaded to the client.  purely for reference, most of my swf are under 100KB, but i don't use the library much except for fonts or if i have to use a prefab component.

*What is an XMP file and how important is it?

it's just metadata - like the album, artist, track title, cover art, etc ID3 info for a song.  http://www.adobe.com/devnet/xmp/

hth