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Image filter and jpg output in Flash 8

By: Jorge Solis

Goals

One of the more impressive features about the new Flash 8 is the ability to manipulate Bitmap data. With the new BitmapData class you can manipulate images pixel by pixel, copy from one bitmap object to another and set color at pixel level. Also you can apply filters to images runtime, and the graphic render performance is much better thanks to the cache feature that converts vectors to bitmaps.

One of my first thoughts was about capturing images and pass it to create JPG files on the server. Many people did ask about this, but this was only possible with vector image. Now passing the RGB values for each pixel allows to reconstruct on server side. Anyway, is a huge packet of data, and for sure some data serialization is needed for large images. Also the server have a hard work to rebuild this. Anyway, is a good experiment and possible, so take as a first approach.

On the other side, I play around three of available filter classes, capturing images from the video and showing filtered. Capturing is not only possible with video, but also with any MovieClip in your movie.

Before starting, download the example file >>

Requirements

- Macromedia Flash 8

- A webserver that supports PHP (4.2+) for the output to JPG feature

Note: the video is the one used for all Macromedia examples around FLV files, available at http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/video/water.flv

Here is our working movie. The JPG output is disabled because the server overheading, but you can download the example and test in your own server (remember, use PHP 4.2+ since it needs the GD library)

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