Flash CS3 hates After Effects’ PNG files

Apparently I’m not the first person to have experienced this ongoing issue, but Flash CS3 borks when importing png’s that are exported from After Effects CS3. The symptoms of this problem are black pixels where the alpha channel is supposed to be and/or seeing a really high width/height when you drag the png onto the stage.

The workaround is simple enough though. Just open up old reliable, Flash 8, and import your PNG sequence. Save out the imported Fla and open it in CS3. Once open you can convert the flash version to 9 and the ActionScript version to 3 with no negative effects. Unfortunately, once you convert the file to CS3 it can no longer be opened in Flash 8 anymore, so I would recommend just one sequence per fla that you can export as a SWF to compose inside a class that loads that SWF. That way if the png sequence changes its no big deal to import it again.