Best way from FCP to Flash Video for web?

[David Roth weiss]

No Flash codecs are included with FCP. To encode QTs to Flash you have several options, but the best are the ON2 Flix products that use the VP6 codec. The Flix products to choose from are Flix Pro, a standalone Flash encoder, and Flix Exporter which is a plugin that adds the codec to FCP, QT Pro, Compressor, and Motion.

I use Flix Pro myself and recommend it highly. Its easy to learn, but a bit more difficult to master, as it has powerful tools that do require experimentation. For instance, with your four minute peices, you will almost certainly want to use the progressive download capabilities of Flash, which loads a user defined percentage of the file before playing, in order to provide smooth and uninterupted playback. That requires a certain amount of trial and error, as the manual simply does not go into a very detailed explanation. But once you get it right, its really great.

Hope this helps…

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Walter Biscardi]

In the future, use the Search Posts function here on the Cow. There is a thread right down below discussing how to create high quality Flash videos from FCP.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/993278

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Ed Dooley]

As Walter said, there’s a long thread if you just scrolled down a little bit (it’s only a day or so old fer’ Crikey sakes!).
As for David’s comment below, not true. H.264 is now a Flash codec, just like ON2VP6 is. You might argue that it’s not ready for prime-time because of needing Flash 9 to play it, or that some folks aren’t able to play it with certain Flash players yet. But it’s an official Adobe-supported Flash codec now.
Ed

[David Roth Weiss] “No Flash codecs are included with FCP. To encode QTs to Flash you have several options, but the best are the ON2 Flix products that use the VP6 codec. The Flix products to choose from are Flix Pro, a standalone Flash encoder, and Flix Exporter which is a plugin that adds the codec to FCP, QT Pro, Compressor, and Motion. “

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ed Dooley] “As for David’s comment below, not true. H.264 is now a Flash codec, just like ON2VP6 is. You might argue that it’s not ready for prime-time because of needing Flash 9 to play it, or that some folks aren’t able to play it with certain Flash players yet. But it’s an official Adobe-supported Flash codec now.”

It requires a bit of coding on the back end to make it work. Adobe’s own Flash Player won’t play H.264 yet, we even changed the file format to mp4 and f4v and it still didn’t work. Adobe Media Player works just fine, but not Flash Player.

So it sort of, kind of, if you do it exactly the right way works, but it’s not as easy as just opening an H.264 file in Flash Player.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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[Ed Dooley]

I wonder why you’re the only person I’ve heard with this problem? I’m not saying you *are* the only one, just that Adobe incorporated H.264 in their Flash player even before they did in thei Media player and lots of people seem to be doing it just fine. The one issue that was (and may still be) a problem, is that Adobe Flash player won’t start playing an H.264 until the complete video is downloaded if the moov atom is at the end of the file, it needs to be at the head. Some encoders put it at the end, so it has to be moved. There are plenty of Adobe and other support pages on how to do that. Maybe that’s what you’re experiencing, the file is downloading (and not starting to play) and you’re not waiting for it to download first (not that you should, the move of the moov fixes it).
Ed

[walter biscardi] “Adobe’s own Flash Player won’t play H.264 yet, we even changed the file format to mp4 and f4v and it still didn’t work. Adobe Media Player works just fine, but not Flash Player.
“

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ed Dooley] “Maybe that’s what you’re experiencing, the file is downloading (and not starting to play) and you’re not waiting for it to download first (not that you should, the move of the moov fixes it).”

The files are local. We have two machines here that don’t work and our web designer can’t get it to work easily either at the moment.

We’re just sticking with Quicktime Player for the moment.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
Read my Blog!

[Ed Dooley]

I am too, but mostly for the newest player to penetrate a little further. One thing I’m looking forwrad to in using Flash H.264s instead of QT, is creating vector graphics to overlay the video (titles, etc.). They look so good on the networks’ web casts.
Ed

[David Roth weiss]

[Ed Dooley] “As for David’s comment below, not true. H.264 is now a Flash codec, just like ON2VP6 is. You might argue that it’s not ready for prime-time because of needing Flash 9 to play it, or that some folks aren’t able to play it with certain Flash players yet. But it’s an official Adobe-supported Flash codec now.”

Ed,

My response to Brad’s question was pertinent and accurate, and more importantly, helpful in guiding him toward achieving his objectives. But, you chose to ignore all of that and instead opted to point out an omission about h.264 — that ultimatley hijacked the thread and made it all about h.264. Your expertise on the subject is indeed vast, but try to remember, the objective here is to help people by answering their questions and helping them to get their work accomplished.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Brad Jenkins]

Yeah, I read that thread and didn’t answer my question. I posted this morning on that thread no one answered. Can anyone answer this for me???
i would like to know this.
I think I’ll use on2 flix to convert to flash. So in FCP should I export my 4 min video using Quicktime movie @ current settings ( dv ntsc 48) , or Quictime conversion to h.264 ( should i keep the same dimensions ? and what other settings are best?) , or export using compressor ? I really dont know what I should be starting with when converting to flash using on2 flix. Is it best to start with the highest quality quicktime video? Should i change the dimenstions, and if so, do I do that when converting to flash or while exporting from FCP. What is best to end up with, a .flv or .swf or whatever the 3rd one is .f4l or something like that 🙂

PLEASE HELP

[Ed Dooley]

Dave,
The whole reason I said your staement was wrong is because you *weren’t* accurate. Why should we let misinformation stand if the whole purpose is to help people? Someone wanted to know about Flash codecs in FCP and you said there are no Flash codecs in FCP. Well, H.264 *is* a Flash codec. Saying that I hijacked the thread to correct wrong information, is just… well… wrong. 🙂 Sorry if you were offended.
As for talking about about H.264 in a Flash codecs thread, after someone says ON2VP6, is just as legitimate as talking about ON2. It didn’t take anything away from ON2, I think it’s a great codec (and so is that other Flash codec, H.264)
Ed