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SWF AVM Specification Errata

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Nathan Adams edited this page Oct 29, 2023 · 19 revisions

This page lists errata and undocumented information from the official Flash specifications provided by Adobe:

(TODO: Jot down anything I vaguely remember being incorrect)

SWF19

DefineFunction2

If a function is running on the root timeline, _parent is undefined and does not get preloaded into a register. Instead, _global mistakenly uses the same register.

This means that this code will be incorrect when placed on the root timeline:

function f()
{
	trace(_parent);  // traces _global
	trace(_global);  // trace undefined
}
f();

See the define_function2_preload_order test for an example.

This doesn't seem to apply to other preloaded registers like super. If super is undefined, it still gets set to a register.

Double-precision floats

(SWF19 p.16)

Double-precision floats in AVM1 ActionPush actions are not stored as 64-bit little endian, but instead stored as two 32-bit little endian chunks. This requires some byte swapping to reconstruct the double. This is the order of the bytes in the SWF file: 45670123

Or this code which swaps it into proper 64-bit little endian:

let num: [u8; 4];
num.swap(0, 4);
num.swap(1, 5);
num.swap(2, 6);
num.swap(3, 7);
(&num[..]).read_f64::<LittleEndian>()

Note that this only applies to AVM1; doubles in AVM2 are standard little-endian.

DebugId tag

Undocumented tag generated in debug builds. See http://wahlers.com.br/claus/blog/undocumented-swf-tags-written-by-mxmlc/ for more info.

Data Size
Unknown UI8[16]

DefineButtonCxform tag

(SWF19 p.199)

This tag was only used briefly in Flash 2(?) and is not well documented (TODO: Is there any content in the wild that uses this?)

The tag can actually contain multiple color transforms. It applies the color transforms respectively to each character record in the define button tag.

PlaceObject3

(SWF19 pp.48-52)

The spec says that ClassName will be present if (HasClassName || (HasImage && HasCharacterId)), but it should actually be (HasClassName || (HasImage && !HasCharacterId)). That is, if we are placing an image without a character ID, we need a class name to know which image to create.

ProductInfo tag

Undocumented ID of the software that published the SWF. See http://wahlers.com.br/claus/blog/undocumented-swf-tags-written-by-mxmlc/ for more info.

Data Size
ProductId U32
Edition U32
MajorVersion U8
MinorVersion U8
BuildNumber U64
CompileDate U64

Protect tag

(SWF19 p.53)

If the Protect tag has an MD5 hash, there will be two bytes of data before the MD5 (they seem to always be 0?) Tag format:

Data Size
Unknown U16
MD5 STRING

ActionDelete2

(SWF19 p.94)

ActionDelete2 push true or false based on if the property actually existed prior to deletion.

ActionGetURL2

(SWF19 pp.82-83)

The SendVarsFlag, LoadTargetFlag, and LoadVariablesFlags are listed in reverse order. This is the proper order:

LoadVariablesFlag  UB[1]
LoadTargetFlag     UB[1]
Reserved           UB[4]
SendVarsFlag       UB[2]

BevelFilter

(SWF19 pp.46-47)

The ShadowColor and HighlightColor variables are listed in reverse. This is the correct order:

HighlightColor     RGBA
ShadowColor        RGBA

AVM2

Variable-length encoding and s32

(AVM2 p.18)

When reading an variable-length encoded s32, no sign-extension is done. The value is read as a variable-length u32 and reinterpreted as signed. This means that any negative integer must takes up the full 5 bytes.

0b0100_0000 as an s32 is 64, not as -64.

0b1000_0000 0b0100_0000 as an s32 is 8192, not as -8192.

0b1000_0000 0b1000_0000 0b1000_0000 0b1000_0000 0b0000_1000 is -2147483648.

Video

FLV type flags are specified backwards

(VFFS p.4, p.6, p.9)

The type flags in the FLV header indicate if an FLV has Audio or Video tags. The specification reserves 5 bits for future purposes, one bit for if there's audio tags, another reserved bit, and one bit for if there's video tags. This implies that a video file with an audio track should have a type flags byte of 0xA0, but actual FLV files (at least those encoded by FFmpeg) have a 0x05, which is reversed.

The same mistake is made for bit fields in the audio and video data headers. An H.263 keyframe is type byte 0x12, not 0x21; 44.1khz 16-bit mono MP3 is 0x2E not 0x72.

Script data blocks start with an extra trash byte

(VFFS p.10)

FLV files can include arbitrary ActionScript data. This is structured as calling arbitrary methods on the NetStream that is loading the FLV, including the onMetaData event handler that gets information about the loaded movie.

In every movie that I've tried to load this script block data is prepended with a 0x02 trash byte. There is no documentation about this byte and it does not appear to have any significance.

Script data blocks have missing terminators

(VFFS p.10)

Script data allows the use of a structure called a SCRIPTDATAOBJECT, which is a list of key and value pairs. These are terminated by three bytes: 00 00 09.

Since SCRIPTDATAOBJECT is intended to provide arbitrary ActionScript data, this is a recursively nested type. The FLV spec designers, in the name of development time economy, have the actual list of methods to call be a SCRIPTDATAOBJECT. This implies that a method being called with an object should have two 00 00 09 terminators at the end.

Every script data I have only has one terminator; which implies that the whole data block is terminated by it's length and not by an explicit terminator. Further testing will be necessary to determine if Flash Player is tolerant to missing terminators in other cases.

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