• Registered: Aug 28th 2007
  • Posts: 61

Topic: How do I resolve "unable to transcode font" error?

I am not sure if this is a Flex Builder 3 issue per se, but I keep running into this error randomly with some fonts and not another, even though I am just embedding a straight TTF font.

exception during transcoding: Unexpected exception encountered while reading font file 'assets/Helvetica.ttf'
unable to build font 'Helvetica'
Unable to transcode assets/Helvetica.ttf

A bug has been filed to Adobe and fortunately there is a quick solution to get around it. All you have to do is go to your project properties (right-click on your project would be easiest), then go to "Flex Compiler", then under "Additional compiler arguments:" add "-managers flash.fonts.AFEFontManager".

There will most likely be something else already in that box, all you have to do is add a space between each arguments.

Remember, you can only embed TTF and OTF fonts in Flex 3 (or use SWF for any other type). This workaround won't work if your font is not supported anyway.

  • Registered: Jul 13th 2010
  • Posts: 1

Re: How do I resolve "unable to transcode font" error?

I ran into this problem, whereas my coworkers did not.  Very frustrating.

The fix described above worked fine but we were all running equivalent projects, each pointing to our checkout of the same code base.

I finally found the variance.  Our checkouts are on a network server (connected via samba).  It turns out everybody else had their projects pointing to a mapped network drive, and I had mine pointed directly to the network path.

I deleted my project(s), then re-imported them using a mapped drive as the path... Viola!  Just to confirm, I deleted my projects again and imported them using the direct network path, and the problem reappeared.

This may be a valid alternative for some folks, rather then mucking with compile options or configuration.

FlexBuilder 3
SDK 3.4 and SDK 3.5
Windows 7 (64bit)