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Has any one ever successfully converted a flash movie to AVI?
I posted a while back about how to convert a flash movie to AVI and retain it’s quality. I’ve tried Macromedia Flash and Ulead but haven’t achieved good results. It either has poor quality, speeds up the framerate by about 10x, or resizes the movie. So I am wondering is it even possible to convert flash to an acceptable quality AVI for a DVD? Has anyone ever done it?
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5 Replies
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The short answer is no. There are a few software out there that will convert to uncompressed, but the way flash compresses makes it very difficult to regain a descent footage.
Vince
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I’ve done a boatload of this kind of thing. There’s no easy answer to your question.
I am generally given an SWF (small web format) Flash file created by a Flash developer and I need to either convert it to MPG1 (for delivery apprpriate for a PowerPoint presentation) or I need to incorporate the Flash piece into a larger video that demonstrates something or other. Obviously, they are looking for is a video that replicates the end-user experience that they see when the Flash piece is viewed on the web via a browser.
There are a bunch of software packages that do this (swf2avi, etc.) You can Google find a lot. However, there isn’t one that always works. It depends on the techniques used by the Flash developer. It seems like the trickier they are, the less likey the conversion will go well. Some developers use a lot of scripting code to accomplish all kinds of fancy effects. Plus, they don’t normally use frame rates and sizes that are video friendly. Many times this means that the conversion program messes up the audio timing with the visuals, jerky video, etc. Keep in mind that the SWF isn’t truly compiled code. The browser still renders a fair amount on the fly, which is why a lot of converters can’t seem to duplicate the feel.
Generally, I take an SWF, run it thru a couple of converters to see how they look. If they look good, I’ll use them. If not, I set up a nice large flat panel display and do it the old fashion way, I carefully set up the room lighting, white balance, zooming, etc. and video tape it (while capturing the sound.) This comes as close to capturing the typical end user experience as possible (if the converter fails to do a decent job.)
This is at least my personal take – based on experience. My favorite definition of the word ‘experience’ is: Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
As always, your mileage may vary…
Tim
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I have set Decklink card as 2.nd desktop, place the explorer vindow on it and run swf file. While file is running I have capture this to Betacam tape. After that I have recapture this video to uncompressed timeline from Betacam tape and speed the video to a proper frame rate. It is not quite good as all stated before ( wrong frame rate, blocky picture, etc ) but is most efficient way if you have this hardware.
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Sounds like a hardware solution version of screen scraping (ala Camtasia.) Probably works better than software only – Camtasia really falls down if you set the frame rate too high, and especially if it’s a rather large SWF. It, too, mostly looks blocky and such. You’d think an export from the Flash development environment itself would be the best bet – but it really doesn’t work very well either. It just may be the inherent differences between a computer and video. Sometimes ya just can’t mess with physics. Most often I find myself taping it myself.
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