Flash Video Recorder - SWF Converter

SWF Converter

Flash Video Recorder's SWF Converter converts AVI movies to Flash (.swf) files. Normally, an AVI converted to SWF by the converter results in a much smaller file that can be streamed across the internet.

The SWF Converter is able to convert AVIs to Flash files in a lossless manner. This means there is no degradation of image quality or decrease in frame rates. For an AVI with small dimensions running at high frame rates, the .swf filesize is about 30% of the original AVI file. For large image-sized AVIs, the reduction in file size is even more dramatic, with the converted file being only 5% of the original AVI.

To launch SWF Converter, select the Tools -> SWF Converter command inside Flash Video Recorder. See below: (You can also double click the SWF Converter icon file in the installed directory.)



To convert a file, simply click the button.

The SWF Converter will ask you for an AVI file to convert. It will then display a dialog box below where you can adjust some of the conversion parameters.



General Conversion Parameters

The Output Filename items let you indicate the name of the (.swf) to generate. You can choose a different filename by clicking on the Change button. The SWF Converter will also create an accompanying HTML file that will be opened when the conversion is completed. You can thus preview the .swf movie in your internet browser.

The Video Properties items let you specify the color display mode of the Flash movie. It can be 16bit or 32bit. A 16 bit movie will give a smaller file size, but may affect the display quality slightly.

When the SWF Converter converts the AVI, it actually behaves like a player that plays back the AVI and re-samples / re-captures the frames at fix periods of time. The Sample rate is the number of frames that is sampled every second. This rate is also used in the playback of the Flash (.swf) movie. A higher rate will result in a smoother playback, but a large value is not necessary if the original AVI itself is not playing at high speed.

The SWF Converter generates Flash movie frames using a temporal compression algorithm. To save space, it does not save every frame for each frame it samples or captures. Instead, the difference between the current frame and the previous frame is stored. The Producer thus periodically store a full frame (Keyframe) followed by a number of difference frames (Intermediate Frames). The Keyframe Rate indicates the number of Intermediate Frames that will follow each Keyframe. A higher value usually means higher compression.

You also can Encode the Audio to the Flash movie if there is an audio track in the AVI. You can encode it without compression (PCM) or with compression (ADPCM).

Please note: The audio track in the original AVI may already be compressed in some format that is incompatible with Flash (e.g CCITT u-law or CCITT A-law ). In this case, SWF Converter will attempt to convert it to PCM and then reconvert to, say ADPCM, before actually saving the sound stream to the Flash file.

Sometimes, the audio conversion stage indicated above may fail. You may get error messages such as “Error Opening Audio File for Conversion”. In this case, you can solve this by pre-converting the audio track in the AVI file to the PCM format. This can easily be achieved with a third party video editor (such as VirtualDub).

Instantiating a layout

You instantiate a layout by simply double click on the layout item or drag it out of the Screen Captions dialog box. By doing so, all the shapes that are saved into the layout will be displayed on the desktop in their correct order and position.

Behavior Group

The Add Player Controls item, when checked, will add a play, stop and pause button to the Flash movie.

The Loop item will cause the Flash movie to go back to the 1st frame when it has finished playing. Otherwise, it will stop at the last frame.

The Autostart item will cause the Flash movie to play automatically when launched. If this item is turned off, you will need to add player controls to the Flash movie. Otherwise, the Flash movie will always stop at the 1st frame and there is no provision (no play button) for users to play it.

If Loop is selected, but AutoStart is turned off, the Flash movie, when it has finished playing, will go the 1st frame and stop there

The Add Preloader + Progressbar checkbox adds a “Loading … “ message to the SWF file. A progress bar at the bottom indicates the fraction of loading that is completed.

If you select the Produce raw movie checkbox, SWF Converter will produce a linear SWF file without the Preloader and Player buttons. This raw movie can be loaded / enhanced by the Flash MX editor.

SWF Interface Parameters



This panel allows you to customize the message that the preloader displays when the SWF file is being loaded. The default message is “Loading …”, but you can easily translate the message into a different language by choosing another bitmap. Alternatively, using your company’s logo as the preloader image may give the Flash file a professional touch.

When the Flash Player has downloaded a SWF file partially, it will start playing the movie. The Percentage of movie to preload refers to the fraction of the movie that will be loaded before the playing starts.

If you want to make the dimension of the Flash file to be larger than the dimension of the AVI movie, you can specify a non-zero width and height for the borders around the movie. The borders are, by default, white in color. However, if you need to match colors with your custom controller (i.e custom play buttons etc.), you can change the border colors by clicking the “Background Color” button.

If you want to customize the graphics for the controller interface, you can do so by editing the bitmap files in the Flash Video Recorder / controller directory. You are advised to use graphics with the same dimensions as the original bitmaps. Otherwise you will need to edit the Controller.ini file (in the //controller subfolder) with a text editor.

Advanced Conversion Parameters



The Manage Flash Player Memory will reduce unnecessary memory usage. It achieves this by freeing objects / frames that have already been displayed. However, because of this, movies with the “Loop” option will need to reload every time they have completed playing.

If your AVI file is very large, Flash Video Recorder will not be able to squeeze all the information into a SWF file. This is due to the 16000 frame limit imposed by the Flash player. In this case, Flash Video Recorde will split your movie into several SWF files that are chained together. For deployment, you will need to upload all the SWF files to your server.

You have the option not to chain the SWFs together if you are creating an external SWF file that will load and manage them. This assumes you are very experienced in using actionscripts in the Flash MX editor and is thus not covered in this help file.