SWF to FLV?

[tdellaringa]

I tried searching on this, but I'm not quite finding what I need - maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Although I know Flash fairly well, I'm totally new to FLV - never done anything with it.

I think what I want to do is pretty simple. I'm going to create a little Flash presentation, a couple minutes long. I want to post it to my website in FLV, not as a SWF. Basically it's supposed to be like a small movie or trailer. I want them to be able to pause it or rewind or whatever, so it needs to be a FLV.

Is there a way to just export as a FLV? Obviously you need the controls somehow, so maybe it's a component? I'd also like to know how the best way to post it to my site would be.

Thanks - links to tutorials would be fine, or whatever.

[dan_hin]

with a bit of work, there's no reason why you should ever have to convert to FLV.

construct a custom swf player. have controls to play, pause and scrub the swf.

it's as simple as

play()
stop()
gotoAndPlay()
gotoAndStop()

and a little bit of maths to get the scrub bar working, but nothing too hard.

Failing that, you can export to uncompressed quicktime or AVI from flash, and mov/avi to flv using the Flash Video Encoder which comes with flash cs3 or lower. Once you've converted your flv, you can import it using the import-> video command from the file menu, then just follow the wizard!

Dan

[tdellaringa]

Great, I used the FVE as you suggested and it works - so the final output then is a SWF which I add to my page? Is there anything special I have to do? I believe I have to upload the FLV to the same directory as well, correct?

[dan_hin]

Yes, correct.

you'll need:

yourSwfName.swf
[optional]skin.swf
yourVideo.flv

all three need to be in the same folder (so make sure that when you import the video, it's in the right place).

That should do it!

Dan

[tdellaringa]

Great, thanks so much for the help. Last question: I'm basically making a commercial for my comic strip using this. My idea was to pull in a bunch of panels from the strips (so they will be bitmaps), do a little voiceover, pan around the panels and so forth. No real animation, although there may be some sound effects and maybe a couple of small animated things (like a light flash, stuff like that).

Is this going to make for a huge file by using a lot of bitmaps like this? Does converting each bitmap to a symbol help at all?

[Stephanee]

I tried searching on this, but I'm not quite finding what I need - maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Although I know Flash fairly well, I'm totally new to FLV - never done anything with it.

I think what I want to do is pretty simple. I'm going to create a little Flash presentation, a couple minutes long. I want to post it to my website in FLV, not as a SWF. Basically it's supposed to be like a small movie or trailer. I want them to be able to pause it or rewind or whatever, so it needs to be a FLV.

Is there a way to just export as a FLV? Obviously you need the controls somehow, so maybe it's a component? I'd also like to know how the best way to post it to my site would be.

Thanks - links to tutorials would be fine, or whatever.

If you have Adobe Flash CS3 or 4, you can do it in minutes. But Adobe Flash CS3 or 4 is commercial softwares and cost a little expensive. ex. Adobe Flash CS 4 cost nearly 1000 dollars.
You can chekc this tutorial about how to do this -
http://flash-video-player.blogspot.c...-web-user.html

[dan_hin]

ahh, the smell of spam is in the air again.... Do the mods know this board is awash with spam?

ahem, back on topic:

It depends on how frugal you are with your compression for the images. With a bit of trial and error, you can really reduce file sizes with little noticeable drop in quality. Of Course, even with incredible compression you'll probably find you won't be able to get much beyond around 20-30k per image (depending on size of course) before things start to go muddy, pixellated and awful.

For what you're doing though, i would recommend doing your commercial in after effects and exporting to FLV. much smaller file sizes and animation, effects etc are about 1 million times more intuitive in AE than in flash.

Dan