Jpg -> swf: how can I do this?

[jammer2]

I want to be able to take a jpg and convert it into a swf.
How can I do this?

Em... well... I've been reading through some the posts... and wow! There seems to be some really kewl stuff happening... especially vid2flash...

I 'think' I kinda know half the answer to my question...
[I've read some other postings on Ming for example...]

But I was just hoping someone could tell me where I should start...?

Should I just try Ming and use Perl or something?

Or should I perhaps look at Open SWF?

Any help/opnions would be reeeally useful.

Thanks.


Jam

[JAEzell]

If that is all you are ever going to do, there is code for doing only that (just search through the previous discussions on the subject). There is no reason to use a whole SDK for such a simple step. Otherwise, if you need to do more than that in the future, check http://www15.brinkster.com/JAEzell for a list of the SDKs available. which one you use will depend on your taste and preferred programming language.

--Jesse

[motoole]

Vid2Flash is cheap though - $25 bucks and it works well
on converting these. I have tried on it on several file
types including jpg. For $25 bucks, why hassle with
anything else. Also you can do it in script mode, so
you dont have to use the gui to do it if you dont want to.
My 2 cents!!

[JAEzell]

Does vid2flash support progressive and photoshop JPEGs? If so, I would agree on this (because there is no code out there for loading these types and converting them that I know of).

--Jesse

[motoole]

Good question on that one. Thats a question for Xn.

[xnxnxn]

progressive jpegs dont work but I tried to save a jpg in photoshop and it worked.

Xn
Mail: vid2swf@yahoo.com
Site: http://www.geocities.com/vid2swf
Discuss: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vid2swf

[Jonathan_B]

You may want to check out Wildform Flix.
www.wildform.com
Jonathan

[motoole]

In all fairness, we have to mention swift-generator as well.
I tested this for converting jpgs to swfs. It is free,
which is great, runs on several platforms (including Linux -yeah!!) and best of all you can do it in batch mode.
If you are just concerned with images at this point,
you simply create a simple flash movie by hand once and
import a jpg. Save it and publish it as a swf. Then
you run swift-generator against the swf file. It creates
a template file (much like macromedia generator).
You then can edit the file and put in a differnt jpg name.
Run swift-generator against the template file and there
you have a new swf created. You can see how powerful this can be becuase you can script and batch the whole process
to do an entire directory of jpgs, or whatever you need on the fly.

[K.A.R.L. 2000]

The problem with using swift-generator is that the images have to match the dimensions of the template. Otherwise, it'll get clipped or stretched.

[Jonathan_B]

With Flix you can resize the image any way you want.
Jonathan

[jammer2]

Originally posted by Jonathan_B
With Flix you can resize the image any way you want.
Jonathan

Flix...? Can you possibly tell me what that is?
Thanks.


Jam

[Flash Git]

SWiSH can also do this and much more, see the footers and examples in the SWiSH forum here at Flash Kit! The wonderful Flix also has a forum here (when can we d/l a trial? .. world fame awaits JB )

[adsalive]

I believe it was misstated that the image get chopped
off in swift-generator. The trick seems to be to just
start by creating a .swf with the largest image you
will have as a placeholder. run swift-generator against
it to create the .sws template. Then if you remove
width/height in the .sws file, but DON'T remove "keepratio" you should be able to use this on all different size images, provide
they are not taller or wider then the very first image
you used to generate the original .sws file.
I tested this out and it seems to work fine.
(See swift-generator message board for more info),
but hey for free and it runs in batch mode and on a
lot of different platforms, it is very useful for
swapping out images, fonts, colors, etc.

[K.A.R.L. 2000]

Hi adsalive,

Your method prevents the clipping but then doesn't it enlarge the image to match the template? increasing the file size? It's been about a year since the last time I used SwiftGen. Maybe things have changed. I'd be interested to know.

Still, there's some other free, cross-platform tools that'll do the job posted all over this board.

[adsalive]

No, it does not enlarge the file! I tried a test using
a good quality larger .jpg photo of my daughter which produced a swf 10 kb. I then use the exact same .sws file and just change the image name to a phone gif quite a bit
smaller. It generated a 5 kb swf file.
Finally I reversed the process once more, and I was
back to the 10 kb larger photo - again not chopped off.
So, it looks to work pretty well. I will have to work with it more to be certain. I should be running a large batch
job this weekend, so this will be a great test. I will
post the results!

[K.A.R.L. 2000]

That's pretty cool. Does it scale the image? I'm trying to remember why I abandoned it.

-karl

[adsalive]

No, that doesn't appear to happen, either. Might have
been the older version. I'll let you know how consistent
it is when I run it through a bunch of images this weekend!