🚀 go-pugleaf

Yep, what Jon T says is exactly what I'm saying...it's the SWF that should be small, not the LIV file. The LIV file is the working document file in LiveMotion- you never publish a LIV file to a web site. It's the SWF (and HTML file) that people visiting your site will download. 

Now the reason the LIV file gets so much larger is that when you place a JPEG file (or a GIF, or any other image format), LiveMotion decompresses it into a raw image file so it can be rendered correctly. (JPEG files are, and I'm glossing over a lot here, essentially raw image files that have been compressed into a smaller file size). LM converts all image files into a raw image format, so that you can see the image in the canvas, apply effects to it, recompress it on export, etc. 

When you save the LIV file, the raw image file gets saved with it...not the JPEG file. This is also what keeps edits made to the image in LiveMotion non-destructive to the original JPEG file. And these are the reasons why the LIV file gets larger after you place an image. And that's OK, because it is only a working document file, not the file that visitors to your web site will be downloading. 

Hope it helps,
 -Joe