More on Camtasia SWF exports

When you export to SWF from Camtasia, four files are produced: (1) foo.html, (2) foo.swf, (3) foo_controller.swf, and (4) foo_config.xml. The names of these are all based on the project name (here, “foo”). The first is a simple HTML frame in which your SWF (item 2) will be embedded. Along with your SWF, Camtasia creates a playback controller as a separate SWF (item 3). This comes in several flavors. I use the “advanced” one which has play, pause, fast forward, rewind, a customizable “about” box, and a time display showing the length of the clip and the current position in minutes and seconds. (You can tweak the colors and stuff in the export wizard, but I’m just using the default advanced controller.) Thing is, the controller is generic. It uses the config file (item 4) to know which SWF (item 2) to call. Crank open the XML file and you’ll only have to hack three lines in order to use the same controller.swf with all of your foo.swf files. It’s not much of a savings in terms of space (controller.swf is only 60K), but it does keep your file structure a little simpler.

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