converting .gif or .jpg to .swf

[xnxnxn]

It's very nice but I think there is a problem with progressive JPEGs.

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

[spparikh]

how do you go about developin thses kind of programs..what tools and techniques are required?
thanks...

spparikh

[Musicman]

Hi,

for jpeg-only conversions there is ming, as well. It does include a gif conversion facility, but this has been built as an extra utility (regrettably) to allow the use of the program without gif in countries where unisys is strong in collecting patent royalties
There was a pure gif2swf converter as well - just search this forum
@MikeChambers: some of the products discussed here are potentially available for any operating system that can be used to produce swf files, some are only available to a very restricted set. Unfortunately generator belongs to the latter group

Musicman

[sarabob]

(Musicman)

I was always under the impression that only software which *created* gifs was subject to the licensing problems?

(spparikh)

You read in an image, convert it to a format which a swf file can use internally (either a "standard" jpeg - referred to as "baseline" in many discussions - or a png-alike compressed bitmap.). You then make a swf "wrapper" to go around the image - this defines the movie size, scaling, centre point etc, and places the image on the screen.

Tools: Macromedia's swf format documentation, and your programming tool/language of choice.

Techniques: image parsing and conversion, trial and error :-)

HTH!

[Musicman]

Hi sarabob,

this was my impression as well, but I am neither affiliated to Unisys nor a lawyer...
There might be even a way to bypass licensing altogether: some "legacy" software developed prior to a specific date is exempt from licensing, and Jef Poskanzer's netpbm package is old enough. So if you link your application to netpbm library or run appropriate netpbm converter as an external command, your entire app should be safe

Musicman

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[johnie]

Originally posted by sarabob
(Musicman)

I was always under the impression that only software which *created* gifs was subject to the licensing problems?

(spparikh)

You read in an image, convert it to a format which a swf file can use internally (either a "standard" jpeg - referred to as "baseline" in many discussions - or a png-alike compressed bitmap.). You then make a swf "wrapper" to go around the image - this defines the movie size, scaling, centre point etc, and places the image on the screen.

Tools: Macromedia's swf format documentation, and your programming tool/language of choice.

Techniques: image parsing and conversion, trial and error :-)

HTH!

The actual patent in question is LZW. If you use LZW to either read or write GIF then you are subject to the patent if it aplies in your country (which it may not- Australia for example has diffrent patent law than Western Europe and North America. Australlian patent laws exempts mathmatical algorithims from patent, and eastern Europe and Asia is a completly nother ball of wax all together). This will all be a moot point in about a year, as the LZW patent will run out then.

- it is further moot becuase MNG and PNG are already developed to replace GIF. MNG is 3 years old and PNG is 7 years old.

[Urya]

I read above about taking screenshot of swf and converting it into animated gif..

But is there anyway to save the user activities by saving the screen into another .swf? (could be from projector file to .swf or .swf to .swf)

What I mean is, if there are two sides of people, User-side and viewer-side, using this swf, and the process of what the User-side did does not matter to the viewer-side. The only thing viewer-side wants is to see the product of what the user-side did.

For example, the user-side is looking at the .swf with bunch of blocks to building something out of it. The viewer-side cannot see this .swf but able to see the result of what came out of it.

Is this totally out of capability of Flash?

thanks!

[Musicman]

Hi Urya,

check this thread http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...hreadid=229368 as well as a few others on the subject of e-cards

Musicman

[JoshuaSee]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it yet, but what about GraphicConverter by Lemke Software? It imports 145 formats and exports 45, including SWF, and the registered version (US$40) will batch convert and manipulate images as you please. I used it to get animated GIF weather maps into an ancient Amiga VideoToaster (IFF format) before starting to use it with Flash.