We have created basic text crawls that can be altered at each station’s discretion in terms of changing font, size, color, etc. These crawls are .swf files that display text from a text file located on the Harmonic MediaDeck. The .swf files are created from .fla files that can be edited and eventually published using Adobe Animate. You can download the project folder from the Graphics folder located in the PMM Production Workspace in Ci.

Once you have downloaded the project folder, unzip it and locate the appropriate .fla file. You should see files for a top and bottom 1920x1080 crawl, a 720 crawl and a SD crawl. Once you locate your desired format, click on the .fla to open it in Animate.

Once Animate is open you will see a blank canvas. The first step you should take is to point the project to the project folder. To do this, click File and select the ActionScript Setting option:

In the ActionScript settings window, select the Source path tab, then select the folder icon to browse to the path of your project folder

Once you select the location of the project folder you should now see the path listed in the settings window.

Next click on the Library path tab and follow the same steps, confirm the Default linkage option is set to “Merged into code”:

 Once the path is set select OK at the bottom of the ActionScript settings window.

If you wish to make changes to the appearance of the text, select the Harmonic Text Scroll entry which can be found in the Library tab on the right side of the Animate app (note, this is assuming you’re using the Essentials layout in Animate).

Next double click the text box that appears directly below the library tab

This should open it on the main canvas:

To change the appearance, select the Properties tab. Here you can move the text around using the position and size options, change the font, spacing, color, etc.

Once you have completed editing the appearance, click the arrow at the top left of the screen to return to the main canvas:

Once you are ready to publish the crawl, to go the File menu and select Publish Settings:

You can name the .swf file something other than the current name of the .fla via the Output name field. Also make sure you are set to publish Flash (swf), your target is Flash Player 10.3 and you are using ActionScript 3.0:

Once all settings are in place, select publish. This swf file should publish to your project folder. You can test on your desktop if you have a flash player, you can also test in Animate before publishing by going to the Debug menu at the top and selecting Debug.

By default, the text file used in conjunction with the crawl is TickText. This can be changed, however it needs to be changed in 2 of the associated ActionScript files in the project folder (HarmonicTextFetcher.as and HarmonicTextScrollTemplate.as). The text file name can be found on line 50 of the HarmonicTextFetcher file:

And on line 34 of the HarmonicTextScrollTemplate file:

Once the name has been changed save each .as file. If you’ve already published the .swf file but want to change the name of the text file you will need to re-publish. The name of the .swf file can be changed to anything, however it will always be tied to the text file indicated in the .as files when the .swf is published.

Once complete place the .swf file and text file in your graphics directory to move it over to your playout servers. Contact the PMM NOC if you have any questions or issues.