Help Creating .FLV files

[Russell Lasson]

You must have had some plug-in installed when you exported your .flv file. I’ve been using AfterEffects for flash encoding.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Kaleidoscope Pictures
Provo, UT

[Chris Borjis]

[liz norris] “And beyond this, is on2 the “best” way to export .flv files from FCP?”

yes absolutely.

ON2 is THE BEST flash encoder on the market right now.

Adobe is good, but not great, it just does not look
as good at ultra low bitrates like ON2 does.

[Ed Dooley]

And now you can use H.264 in Flash, although it will take a while for the newer players that can play it to penetrate. So, I agree that ON2VP6 is the best way to go for .flvs
Ed

[Kevin Monahan]

I have an Intel mac, FCS and CS3 installed and I have the option to export a .flv from QT Conversion. I don’t think you can play it in QT unless it is in Rosetta mode. Never tried it though.

BTW, I gotta learn Flash basics for video, as I am a little confused about workflow getting from .flv to having it play on a web page. Any resources that gets to the heart of the matter?

Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Chris Borjis]

yeah thats a bit frustrating Kevin.

You need to “publish” the .flv with a .swf file (the player itself) to get it to work. The on2 encoder has this
capability though I have not used it. My web person uses flash mx to publish them.

.flv will not play from any media player, you need a standalone flash player, there are a few free ones out there.

for pc I recommend the wimpy flash player (they make a mac version but it doesn’t work reliably yet)

for mac I recommend the flix flv player.

[Kevin Monahan]

I’ve tried so many times to learn Flash, specifically how to deploy Flash video. Let me see if I can understand your post.

1. Export from FCP as .flv
2. Import .FLV into Flash CS3 (you can use On2 instead, right?)
3. Create the player, player skin and functionality of the player in Flash or On2 using Flash Action Script
4. Create a .SWF file from this Flash File
5. Upload the .SWF
6. Create a web page with a pointer (?) to the online .swf embedded.
7. Upload the web page with the pointer file to the .swf

Is that right?

I know I’m missing some key elements for this workflow. Maybe I will write a discovery article to really nail down the workflow. Someone needs to because raw H.264 ain’t cutting it in the real world. As much as we may not like it, Flash video is the best universal format.

I will continue to pound on the Lynda.com Flash Series. It’s HUGE, and like FCP, with Flash you have to have a good base of knowledge before you can rock with it. Learning Action Script alone is a huge undertaking.

Any more advice?

Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Stace Carter]

To Kevin’s question, if you have Adobe Flash installed, you also probably have the Flash Video Encoder (not sure if that’s the exact name) which is a stand-alone encoding option that will give you the option of choosing a player skin and outputting as a complete SWF – which you can do from several different video formats.