You decide to import a bitmap into Flash. Let’s say it’s a nice clean arrow.

You’re gonna be tweening your arrow a lot, so you convert it into a movie clip and all seems well…until you export or preview your flash movie. You notice that your arrow is suddenly horribly distorted!

No amount of fiddling with JPEG or Flash quality in your settings does any good. You’ve turned off smoothing, and your arrow is a gif so it’s lossless to begin with, and the forums online aren’t helping you AT ALL.

HERE IS HOW TO FIX IT.

When you go to convert your bitmap image into a symbol you will get a little pop up dialog with some options. Your problem is going to be with the almost-not-noticable registration box:

You’re gonna want to change your registration point to a corner. I usually use the upper left corner:

Now when you preview your flash, your image will no longer be distorted!

Added Note: If you’re using a transparent gif like this one, make sure to give it a few extra pixels of border and don’t crop it right next to the edge. I’ve also gotten distortion due to that.