What's the best program to convert Flash to Video?

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Mallek on August 6, 2008 at 4:44pm

What format of video are you trying to get to? I export from Flash as an uncompressed QT file then import it into Premier or Final Cut for further processing. From there I can go to DVD or DigiBeta with great quality. I often screen at a festivals on DVD through a digital projector and it looks awesome. One caveat is that my stuff is all clean vector, no video or image imports.

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Permalink Reply by Don Oskowski on August 6, 2008 at 6:35pm

Any of the standard .mov, Mpeg and such. I just want to get it converted so I can 1. Post stuff here. 2. Post else were as well, but without losing quality, which exporting to .avi with Swish currently does.

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Mallek on August 6, 2008 at 6:52pm

So you are converting the .SWF to .AVI with Swish?

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Permalink Reply by Gulzar Junaid on August 6, 2008 at 7:18pm

Quick Time is the best mode for it helps you to produced squeunce images as well for tv production in adobe premiere!

as for youtube goes....just convert in swf or quick time....
that should help you out!

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Permalink Reply by TempleDog on August 8, 2008 at 12:31pm

Confused here. Flash includes an 'export to movie' option that allows you to render out the scenes to a Quicktime, MPEG or AVI...it's really straightforward, use it all the time. Just remember that you can't have any movie clips in your timeline...if you've got animated cycling elements, change their mode to a looping Graphic in the Properties window.

As for file conversion, I've been using a transcoder package called SUPER. It works great, gives you all the possible formats you could ever want, and it's malware/spyware free. Plus, it costs zero bucks. Go here:

http://www.erightsoft.com/S6Kg1.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the blue "Download SUPER © setup file" link. And don't let the crappy page layout fool you, it's on the up and up...they're code monkeys, not graphics geeks. Either way, do a follow-up post to let us know how you get on. Later!

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Permalink Reply by Don Oskowski on August 8, 2008 at 2:42pm

I use Swish to make my Flash movies, so the only export available to me in .avi. The quality is really poor. So I am hoping to find a converter that can convert .swf to .mov without losing the quality, that I am now.

I'll give that program a shot. Though it looks like it will only convert .swf if there is .flv codecs involved. Thanks for the suggestion!

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Permalink Reply by Niko Anesti on August 10, 2008 at 10:38pm

While on the topic of converting SWFs into other file formats, I always seem to have trouble with the audio syncing correctly, regardless of what program I use to do so (though I primarily use Magic SWF2AVI). I animate at 24 frames per second, and I've tried several different things for audio. Streaming all the files doesn't seem to work at all, despite the fact that they should be playing directly with the video; once an audio file in the timeline ends, the next one starts before it should. Setting the audio to start obviously gets the files to start on cue, but they'll get ahead of the animation. What I've been trying to do is have one layer where there's a completely silent sound file streaming and on loop, and then the rest of the audio (voices, sound effects, etc) I set to start or event. That sometimes makes things better, but depending on the length of the video, it eventually still gets out of sync. Flash seems to have had a terrible history with audio sync, and I currently use Flash 8. Anyone have any suggestions for this problem?

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Permalink Reply by PiGPEN on August 13, 2008 at 6:21am

Audio starting before it should is the stream bug. It happens because theres empty space inbetween streaming audio files.
You can either; get a small silent audio clip and set it to stream and loop throughout the entire animation, or export the audio with export-as-movie in wav format and reimport the soundtrack as a single file.

Also theres another audio bug you might run into if the fps is set to 24fps in which the audio will lag behind the animation...its extremely minute though so its usually only noticeable on long animations (8+ minutes). To fix that bug simply set your fps to 23.96 (yes, flash can do floating point fps).

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Permalink Reply by Niko Anesti on August 13, 2008 at 9:49am

I have tried that first method with the silence, but it does still sometimes go out of sync. Should the audio (not the silent track) be set to start, event, or does it matter?
I'm basically trying to find a way for the audio to be accurately synced when the flash file itself is viewed (like when embedded on a website) and also when converted to another format suitable for sites like Youtube. Eh, I dunno. I think that should work for the most part. Most of my cartoons are short. Anyway, thanks for the reply, I appreciate the tips!

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Permalink Reply by PiGPEN on August 16, 2008 at 2:45pm

Everything should be set to stream...but if thats trouble just do it as one file....will make the swf slightly larger (or smaller....depends on how you use audio) but will definitely play correctly.

As far as converting to video.....for highest quality you'll want to export the movie as an image sequence and as a wav...then bring the two back together in a video editor of your choice to export to a video format (since flash really sucks at it).
I'd recommend using Sony Vegas for video editor.

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