converting avi to flash swf

[mjstrand]

I've tried to create a flash video file using the instructions, and the quality is not very good. If anyone could shed some light on the issue, that would be great.

[mjstrand]

As I understand it, the purpose of video for flash is to keep bandwidth use down. So there will always be degredation over a normal video. The most confusing part of creating a video file for me was that you have to start with the best quality video you have to keep the size the smallest. With better quallity source, flash can do a better job of keeping the size down and the perceived quality up. If bandwidth is not an issue and you know that the playback computers are 2.5ghz or better computers (the best quality), here are some thoughts:

• *you should make sure that your stage size is set to the exact size of your movie clip (640 by 480 or 720 by 480 are standards depending on how you imported it - analog versus digital).
  *set the flash frame rate to 29.97.
  *import with a higher quality, lower keyframes and 100% scale

[mjstrand]

right now i able to load my product image to your kiosks system, and how to preview my kiosks system at customer place, since all my video clip in my local drive ?

[mjstrand]

When you selected the video kiosk, you entered c:\kiosks\promotional_video_japan.swf which is the correct way to do that. Does that path exist on your computer? that is important.

I designed this system so that video came from the local computer so that it loaded quickly and reduced the amount of bandwidth that was used by your account. As you can see, a short clip with audio is over 4 megabytes and could take several minutes to load the first time. Once it has been loaded once, flash caches it for future playback. I suppose I should put a loading status bar on the clip in case this ever happens.

As for allowing customers to view this, I guess it depends on how many customers. If you will physically be going to each location, you could burn the flash video file onto a cd and specify the default cd drive (e:) for the filename on your kiosk. If the customer does not have that drive mapped correctly, then you will need to change the drive letter for your kiosk which will then cause everyone else to not function.

An optional approach to this would be to upload your video file to your own web site (which will use your bandwidth). When the customer plays the kiosk, they will see a flash warning asking them if they want to allow data retrieval from another site. The customer needs to agree to this to see your video file. Remember that depending on hte connection speed, this can take several minutes to download.

The final option would be to have our servers provide the video bandwidth for you. We need to manually upload this for you. If you do not go over your monthly bandwidth limits of 3GB per month, then it would not cost you anything. If you exceed that amount, then your account stops functioning until you purchase additional bandwidth or until the first of the following month. Although this is an option, we prefer to keep video bandwidth off of our servers so that it is available to our hundreds of other customers.

I hope this helps to answer your question. Please let me know how we can help.

[Shalalaila]

For converting video files to flash I recommend Video to Flash Converter because of its good quality:
http://www.geovid.com/Video_to_Flash_Converter/
Cheers!

[NukaCola]

yeah, thanx shalalaila! +)
i`m already using geo!

[NukaCola]

also suggest to visit http://www.vidflash.com
Its online converting system with following webcasting service!

[mjstrand]

These are very interesting products. Thank you for adding these to the forum. Do either of you have experience with having these automatically convert video formats to .flv or .swf files from the server side with php? Is there a way to transfer the files to a standalone computer that processes the video and transfers the result back to the server?

[NukaCola]

These are very interesting products. Thank you for adding these to the forum. Do either of you have experience with having these automatically convert video formats to .flv or .swf files from the server side with php? Is there a way to transfer the files to a standalone computer that processes the video and transfers the result back to the server?

well i think it has to be a console version as I know

and about vidflash i have regestered there but i havent got a confirmation email, and as I know this service will start in a few days. thats what developers say, i`m waiting for this!!!

actually i`m not the person who know everything about it, i`m just an acive user of this +)

[mjstrand]

I have been emailing these guys, and it sounds like the console version is disappearing on April 15, 2006. I tried their windows program, and although it is somewhat slower than the actual flash profession program to do the importing, it is a nice solution. I suppose it could be slower because the demo version puts an image on every frame of the video. Anyway, I suspect that their new system should be on-line before April 15th. thanks again for your help and for the post!

[andy_lucky]

I want to convert video to flash that can be played on Internet Explorer.I hope that It supports types of source video files such as mpeg, avi, mpg, wmv, rm, rmvb, mov and so on, and can generate flash 7,8 video output, then get the flash on the web. and it can add special effects, movie beginning and movie end. It support batch encoder more better.
get it on http://www.download.com/Flash-Video-MX/ ... ag=lst-0-1

[Grobby]

and i've found another one converter from video to flash-FlashConv.has anybody used it? i think it's worthwhile thing, not bad actually.

[Grobby]

also there's a tool VisiFly, i used trial version and can say that it's good enough.

[cold_name]

also suggest to visit http://www.vidflash.com
Its online converting system with following webcasting service!

I'm finding this site very nice too. But now mostly I use new PRO version of "video to flash converter". As always geovid made worth thing.

P.S. Sorry if I'm late.

[mjstrand]

Thanks to all of you for posting this. I still have not found a good way to use our servers to automatically convert avi or other format video clips into flash. We currently are downloading it and using the flash software to import the movie which does the conversion. I also have a piece of software that would automate that manual process on a workstation in our office instead of the server. Is that the best way to do this on a linux server? If I had a windows server, I have found a couple other ways to deal with this, but Windows is not an option for us at this time.

Anyway, just thought I would thank everyone for your insights and to see if there are any other thoughts. Thanks and have a great holiday everyone!