Creating Printable Movies > Printing from the Flash Player > Specifying a print area

 

Specifying a print area

By default, the movie's Stage determines the print area. Any object that extends off the Stage is clipped and does not print. Loaded movies use their own Stage size for the print area, not the main movie's Stage size.

As an alternative to using a movie's Stage size, you can set three different print areas:

For either the Flash Player context menu or the Print action, you can designate the movie's bounding box as the print area for all frames by selecting an object in one frame as the bounding box. This option is useful, for example, if you want to print a full-page data sheet from a Web banner.

With the Print action, you can use the composite bounding box of all printable frames in a Timeline as the print area—for example, to print multiple frames that share a registration point. To use the composite bounding box, select the Max argument in the Print action parameters. See Adding a Print action.

With the Print action, you can change the print area for each frame, scaling objects to fit the print area—for example, to have objects of different sizes in each frame fill the printed page. To change the bounding box per frame, use the Frame parameter in the Print action parameters. See Adding a Print action.

 
To specify a print area:

1

Open the Flash document (FLA) containing the frames you will set to print.

2

Choose a frame that you have not specified to print with a #p frame label.

To organize your work, you can select the next frame after one labeled #p.

3

Create a shape on the Stage the size of the desired print area.

You can also choose a frame with any object of the appropriate print area size to use that frame's bounding box.

4

Select the frame in the Timeline that contains the shape you'll use for the bounding box.

5

If the Property inspector is not displayed, choose Window > Properties.

6

In the Property inspector, enter #b for Label to specify the selected shape as the bounding box for the print area.

You can enter only one #b label per Timeline. This option is the same as selecting the Movie bounding box option with the Print action.