Restoring original FLA file from SWF could be a problem. Let’s see how some conversion problems can be solved.
1. ???? instead of readable texts
This can happen if texts contain symbols of a national (localized) alphabet. Customizing conversion options, enable “Force ANSI” option in Symbols options.
If this option is enabled, heuristic method will be used to fix a bug in Adobe Flash MX (6.0). Adobe claims that it uses text in Unicode-16 (2 bytes for a character) format, meantime Cyrillic text, for instance is represented as ISO 8859 code (8-bit per character). Therefore, there could be some problems with text representation in the resulting FLA file. This bug is applicable to Central European, East European and several other encodings.
Enable “Convert as shapes” option (“Static texts” mode in Symbols options). This method guarantees that all static texts will be present in a FLA file in a readable format but they will not be easy to edit. However, you’ll be able to edit the text as a set of shapes.
The second option – “Convert as text” – lets all static texts in a SWF file to be converted into a FLA file as static text fields. It gives possibility to easily edit the text later on. But the possible problem, which may arise with this method, is that you may see question marks instead of your text, if there is no character map for characters.
You can try as well “Texts into library” option (Symbols options). This option allows converting texts as symbol instead of placing them on timeline. Presenting texts as symbol permits to avoid incorrect text appearance when the texts are on mask-layer or participate in motion tween.
2. Motion tweening issues
When decompiling a motion tween, you need to experiment with “Motion tween” settings.
Motion tweening is a process of generating intermediate frames between two different states of an object. It produces transposition effect when the first object state evolves smoothly into the second one.
“Allowable deviation” option defines the algorithm sensitivity and represents a deviation from imaginable motion trajectory in percent. It can highly affect the resulting movie quality:
1. If you set deviation value small enough, the motion tween may not be recognized at all, or recognized as several successive tweens. It won’t influence the objects motion, but may make editing difficult.
2. On the contrary, if deviation is too high, there may be flaws in the resulting FLA file, where some objects will not follow the path correctly and produce quirky movements.
You can disable motion tweening conversion at all. This will solve the problem with incorrect motion tween recognition. To disable motion tweening conversion tick off “Detect motion tweens” in “Motion tween” settings.