video to flv or swf converters
These will be tested, just a virtual post-it note for now…
[update: notes added after testing]
Test object: convert 1.79 Megabyte QT .mov file, 40 sec, 320×240, no sound
Results:
Vertical Moon’s Video2swf
easy to use interface
converts to swf with player included
quality seems comparible to original
mac and windows
45 $US
Riva FLV Encoder
simple enough interface
relatively quick conversion
converts to flv (not swf), so have to integrate with flash player manually
quality seems good
windows only
free download
Both tools seem to do the job needed. Given that Video2swf will output both to swf and to flv formats, and is available for both Mac and Windows, the extra cost might be worth it. At 45 $US it’s not all that expensive. If you just need to make flv files from your videos and you’re on Windows, the free Riva FLV Encoder will do the trick.
Hi Pauline,
There’s some decent free software for this purpose as well: the combo ffmpeg (transcoding) plus flvtool2 (metadata injection) works fine – pretty useful for automatic/batch conversion on some server, too.
Hannes
Hi Hannes, thanks for the tips. I hadn’t noted it above, but we were actually looking at tools that a client would ultimately be using, so a gui was necessary too. Glad to know about ffmpeg and flvtool2 just the same.