1 Let’s start with the basics and open a new Flash document. Open the Document Properties panel using or click the “Size” button in the Properties panel. Here you can determine the width and height of the movie and its frame rate. But before we change anything we need to decide what aspect ratio we are authoring to.

2 NTSC (National Television Standards Commission), the video standard used in North America and most of South America, uses a 4:3 aspect ratio, which essentially means the width and height of a standard television set. To break it down in even simpler terms, 4:3 means that for every four units wide, the picture is three units high. Apply this formula to a 16:9 screen and you’ll get 16 units of width for every nine units of height. Simple arithmetic so far but it’s about to get tricky.

3 NTSC doesn’t use square pixels; they are rectangular. A problem arises when you develop content for video on your computer because you are creating square pixels to be displayed as rectangular pixels. That means your video will look slightly stretched. To compensate for this, adjust the width of the movie so that the aspect ratio is 720 x 540.

4 NTSC uses a frame rate of 29.97 fps. You can export Flash movies that have different frame rates such as 12, 15, or 24 fps and convert them to 30 with video editing software, although a movie converted from 12 to 30 fps will not look as smooth as a movie originally authored at 30 fps. You can save your NTSC Flash document as a Template if you plan to create multiple files (File > Save as Template...). You can also create your own template categories by creating new folders in the “Templates” folder on your local hard drive where Flash CS4 is installed.

5 PAL (Phase Alternating Line), the predominant video standard outside the Americas, also uses the 4:3 aspect ratio but uses a 720 x 576 pixel aspect ratio. The frame rate is 25 fps. PAL has a greater resolution than NTSC and therefore has a better picture quality. Its higher color gamut level produces higher contrast levels as well. But the lower frame rate, compared to NTSC’s frame rate, will not be as smooth.

6 Film uses 24 fps, which is also a popular frame rate among animators. Although you can use 24 fps in your Flash project, when you export it to video, you will need to convert the frame rate as well. This is easily done during the export process by specifying the appropriate frame.

7 Exporting your movie as a PNG image sequence is often the best and most popular method. Go to File > Export Movie and select PNG Sequence as your format. I highly recommend creating a new folder to save your image sequence to since the number of images Flash creates is directly related to the number of frames in your animation (which can easily be hundreds or even thousands). A PNG sequence insures your animation is frame accurate with lossless compression. If you are using After Effects to further refine or add effects to your animation, a PNG sequence import is not only supported, but is also treated as a single object, making it easy to manage.