One size of Flash great; one size not

Hi, I did a search here under "Flash" but didn't find my problem...

I am delivering some 16x9 videos to a client in Flash (.swf_FL8). They have requested 2 sizes: 640x360 and 480x270. The larger sized Flash movies look terrific; very sharp. The smaller sized Flash movies all show jagged edges, particularly on text. It looks as though a comb has been dragged across the image vertically. I interpret that as indicating that the image has been stretched horizontally slightly during the encoding. But the aspect ratios are all perfect 16x9 so I don't understand how that would happen.

I have closely checked the parameters/settings for large vs. small and they appear to be identical with the the exception of frame size and data rate. I even tried to make a smaller Flash movies by using the larger (640x360) template, including that template's higher frame rare, and just adjusting the size. No good. The 480x270 Flash movies still came out jagged-edged.

I've tried all three methods of "Maintain Proportions:" cut, letterbox and pad. Still no joy.

I'd appreciate any suggestions. (Octocore, self-contained full-res source files from Final Cut Pro, using OS 10.5.8 and Episode v.5.3.1.)

TIA


-- Ron

Thanks for taking the time to consider this, Robert. I did try your suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't solve my problem.

I think the weirdest thing here is that I can make a 640x360 Flash movie that looks perfect. But when I use that very same 640x360 template and make only one, single change -- altering the size to 480x270, which has exactly the same aspect ratio -- I get the slight stretched/jaggies effect that ruins the image on the smaller Flash movie.

I have tried every parameter I can find in Episode to overcome this. Can you make a perfectly good 480x270 Flash with Episode from a 720p Final Cut source???


-- Ron

Long time since this thread was active so I don't expect many will see this but I wanted to post a final follow-up for those who responded...

Turns out the problem was all in the Flash player! I didn't realize that when I opened a Flash movie, the player always defaulted to the size of the last movie that it played -- even if the player had been shut down in the interim. There is a drop-down menu to tell the player to re-size according to the movie being played at that moment (that should be the default!) and when I did that, everything plays fine.

Wild goose chase. Thanks very much for trying to help me with this.

-- Ron