Best way from FCP to Flash Video for web?

[Sean Oneil]

[David Roth Weiss] “So spill the beans Sean. Do you find it difficult to use? Or do you think it’s inferior in some other way?”

It’s beyond more difficult to use by comparison. But aside from that, there are a lot of functionality differences. I’m going to assume you haven’t tried Squeeze, else I don’t think you’d be asking me this.

The biggest thing is cropping. If you use the crop filter in Flix Pro (which I need because I have letterboxed stuff), the encoder does not intelligently recalculate the AR and size for you. You have to calculate the dimensions yourself and enter them in manually. Squeeze is the complete opposite. It’s cropping and AR calculation is smart and automatic.

When you create an FLV progressive download in Squeeze, it automatically creates an SWF player file as well for you. Flix requires you to hit Command-P and manually create a SWF player.

Player skins in both programs are a total joke. But On2 also sells a “Power Player Pack” which I bought assuming they’d be good. They’re not. Squeeze at least provides the FLA project files and a very detailed manual on how to edit those skins in Adobe Flash.

The Flix Pro interface is very clunky. Going into that hidden menu to add player skins is annoying. Little hiccups like previewing one of the skins loses focus of the app. And that annoying popup screen when you quit the program – it tells you to click “Yes” to exit (I’ve never seen that on a Mac app before). It just seems like a very amateur-hour port from the Windows version.

Last but not least, I did not see any obvious way to batch encode multiple files and multiple outputs. Squeeze is very well designed for this task – better than Compressor even. Perhaps there is a way to do batch encoding in Flix Pro, but it wasn’t worth spending time to figure it out given all the other shortcomings. Even if there is a way to do it, I know it’ can’t do all the things Squeeze can. Like you can take a filter preset and drag it on some movies in the batch, or all of them. It gives you a graphic tree telling you what’s being done to each file.

So comparing the pros and cons for each program, I couldn’t find a single solitary thing I liked better about Flix Pro.

Oh crap! George Carlin just died!!! Not too happy at the moment.

Sean

[David Roth weiss]

Oh, that’s too bad about George Carlin. He was very funny.

I suspected your issues with Flix Pro might be more user related than anything to do with results. It’s a very deep app and as I’ve said several times, difficult to master.

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]

[Brad Jenkins] “really, thats good to hear. Now Im trying to find an alternative to buying one of these programs. I only need to convert 3 short videos for my new website, and I really don’t want to spend that cash if I dont have too. Thanks for the info.”

Then you’re back at looking at H.264 probably. As we noted before, Flash now supports this codec. Takes some work on the back end, but it can work. You can create that for free from FCP or Compressor.

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!

[Brad Jenkins]

Well, I’ve exported many an h.264 , but I assumed that to work in flash it would be a different flash type of h.264 or something, not the normal one Im used to exporting from fcp quicktime conversion. Are you saying I can just use the FCP h.264 ? What do you mean “it takes some work on the back end” What do I need to do to it????????? thanks

[Walter Biscardi]

[Brad Jenkins] “Are you saying I can just use the FCP h.264 ?”

That’s what Adobe is saying. Just standard H.264 files are supposed to work natively in Flash. They do work perfectly in Adobe Media Player.

[Brad Jenkins] “What do you mean “it takes some work on the back end” What do I need to do to it????????? thanks”

If you go back to Ed’s original posting, he has a link to an Adobe article describing how to make this work, but you need Adobe Flash CS3 to do the coding.

Now Ed was describing how to make this work in Flash Player, but he has dropped off the thread since David told him to grow up and get away from the H.264 discussion.

I can’t get it to work natively in Flash Player here yet, but my website designer is looking in to this and if she figures out something, I’ll let you know. It was something about setting up the header in the file correctly.

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!