Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with video and flash

Compact, HD camcorder with manual control options?

bondcliff — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:11:16 -0800

I’m looking to buy a compact, flash-based, HD-capable camcorder with the ability to shut off automatic controls such as white balance and auto-focus. In addition to the usual stuff one does with a camcorder I’d also like to use it for stop-motion, time-lapse, and some other projects where I’ll need to shut off white balance and possibly auto-focus.

Something like the Flip or the Kodak Zi8 would be ideal but I don’t see that they have the ability to shut off these automatic features. If I have to go for a more traditional shaped camera, that’s fine. I’d like it to be somewhat small and inexpensive. Preferably under $500.00.

It needs to be able to do at least 720p HD widescreen. Good quality, good frame-rate, etc.

I’d prefer flash based but if a hard-drive based camera is my only option I’ll go with it. Tape is right out.

In a pinch, a regular point-and-shoot camera will do as long as the video quality is decent and I can shut the automatic stuff off.

If what I want does not exist, please let me know that too.

Converting PowerPoint to video or flash (again)

The Dutchman — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:04:04 -0800

Converting PowerPoint to video or flash (again) I know this question was just asked, and two years ago but none of the answers suit my needs. I have a PowerPoint presentation with animation that I need to convert into really good, smooth video or flash with all animation in-tact. Camtasia was choppy. Camstudio went kinda crazy when anything moved. Slideshare kills all the animation and blacks out some images. iSpring keeps the animation but seems to briefly show through layered graphics, which ruins the more complex effects I've created, plus it distorts graphs and some bullets. SlideBoom has the same layered graphics problem as iSpring.

To give you an idea of the quality I need, this is a portfolio of my PowerPoint design work that I want to embed on my website and/or send to potential clients in hopes that it will make them want to hire me.

Any ideas?

What's the deal with Flash video on OSX? I can't click the play button!

Glum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:12:28 -0800

Why do Youtube (and other flash videos) become unresponsive on my Mac when they are embedded in other sites? [iMac and MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard (and previous OS), Firefox & Safari]

Often, when I come across an embedded YouTube clip (and sometimes videos from other services like Vimeo) on my RSS feed or in a website I am visiting I am unable to click on it successfully. Trying to access the controls (play, pause etc) becomes almost impossible. I have found that if I right click to pull up the Flash menu, but then deselect it, I do then get one chance to click on the Flash object (with it going white in the process).

These objects almost always work perectly if I click through to watch them in their original location.

My browsers have been doing this for several versions, over the last two versions of the OS and the last three versions of Flash, on both my Macs. I have the most recent versions of all software.

I've read that Flash is very unreliable on OSX - with memory leaks etc. - but this doesn't seem to be that (although, of course, I don't actually know what it is).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Help download this flash video

corpse — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:13:49 -0800

I'd like to save the video from this article and convert it to a avi or something windows can play. I've tried several utilities, but can't seem to get it. Any ideas?

Flash CS4 Quicktime Export leaves artifacts and looks like crud. Help!

buriednexttoyou — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:03:30 -0800

Flash animators: When I export my flash cartoon to quicktime, moving objects leave behind horrible artifacts. Apparently I am not the only one with this problem. If Flash's quicktime export is so crummy, how do the professionals publish their cartoons to video? I'm working with CS4 on a mac, but I've heard this is also a problem with CS3. I've also heard that you can import SWF files into After Effects and then export to video. As much as I'd like to be able to afford AE, I can't at the moment.

I know there are tons of animators working in Flash. Does this problem exist for you, and how do you deal with it?

Flash in the Pan.

weapons-grade pandemonium — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:08:02 -0800

How come I can't view the baseball video clips on MLB.com linked in this MeFi thread? I don't have a problem viewing other flash sites. Running Vista / Firefox / NoScript / allowed cookies. Downloaded latest Flash player. I get a quick line saying "loading related content", and it stays blank.

Creating video from a program help

JohnGL — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:16:24 -0800

I'm looking for a library, package, product or some sample code in either JAVA or Visual Basic that would allow me to create a video from my program. I have some software tools I've developed and I'd like some functionality to my program that could take existing video clips and pictures and then assemble them into a video. I would like the final video format to be FLV however any popular format would do. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Have a great one.

FLV &SWF &youtbue &confusion

AceRock — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:06:10 -0800

FLV to SWF conversion? I'm trying to load an FLV (youtube video) file into Adobe Connect, but it only takes SWF files.

The way I understand it, the youtube player is a SWF file and the FLV video plays within that file.

So my question is: How do I get a playable youtube video onto my machine for uploading to Adobe Connect in SWF format? Any ideas?

Uploading Flash Videos to Youtube

Kiablokirk — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:01:09 -0800

I recently started making animated movies in flash. When I upload them to Youtube or Google video, the audio translates well but the video becomes very jerky. I assume its a byproduct of the way they compress the files, but is there a way to avoid this? For example, in this video, the blanket is supposed to come up in a single smooth motion, and the wink is one smooth motion.

It's especially bad at Youtube, which is a shame, because Youtube is more popular and so I'd rather use it more.

Does it make a difference if I upload a .swf file or a .mov file? Is it because the file size is too big? Would it be better to save it a higher resolution? Am I just uploading them wrong?

I think the animations I've done so far are coming out pretty well, so I would really appreciate anything that would help me show them to people in the way that they were created.

How can I download this news video?

fogster — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:13:32 -0800

I need to download a video from my local ABC affiliate, an ibsys.com site. (If that means anything?) They don't provide a way to do this, and the usual tools are no help. Can you help? This local news story and the attached video pertain to a family member, and I'd like to save the video for posterity. However, the site doesn't make this easy:
- There's no download button.
- They don't use a simple embed tag. In fact, they never call a unique video URL.
- The "Video Helper" Firefox extension doesn't help here.
- Running a packet sniffer, it appears to go off and connect to a Flash server (?) rather than doing a GET over HTTP, so I'm never able to pull out a unique URL like "/video12345.swf" to save.

Surely, someone's found a way to do this?

How do I get streaming web videos to stay full screen on a second monitor?

inbetweener — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:18:22 -0800

How do I keep a web window full-screen on one monitor while working on another? So basically I have just hooked up my old 32" CRT TV to my PC via S-video as a second monitor.

One thing I want to be able to do is have Youtube / Joost / whatever-streaming-webs-source videos playing full screen on the TV whilst working on my PC.

Whilst this works with keeping apps (e.g. VLC / windows media player) full screen, when I play a flash video via Joost or Youtube in Firefox and expand it to fullscreen on the TV, it just collapses back down again the moment I click anything on my primary monitor.

I tried searching around and couldn't find an obvious solution for this - anyone have any bright ideas?

Thanks in advance!

kcet/wttw/pbs flash player doesn't stream programs for me anymore. help!

krautland — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:27:27 -0800

kcet/wttw/pbs flash player doesn't stream programs for me anymore. help! I used to watch various programs like the news hour or chicago tonight via the local pbs affiliate websites (kcet player / wttw player) but they have stopped working in both safari and firefox. all I see is the flash video wheel spinning and nothing ever loading. (I am able to select the various programs/chapters, it's just the actual video that never starts playing.)

I realize a million things could be going on here but any clue what it might be? does it still work for you?

Have a Very Furry Christmas!

katyjack — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:27:25 -0800

I bought some stock video footage of a dog on a green background which I plan to chroma key out. Then I want to morph seamlessly into a graphic - still with the background masked out! And I want to do this all in Flash! For my Christmas Card! Not a total newbie at all of this - details inside. OK, so I do know Flash and Photoshop pretty well and I've got the entire Adobe Suite to use but I've only used Premiere and After Effects a little bit. I've masked out the background from a video before so I think I can remember how to do that with a little difficulty, but what I'd like to do is to use After Effects (I guess) to take the last frame of the image, turn it into a gif or a png and get rid of the background all together so I can take the image into flash and - well - turn it into a talking dog. My lame attempts so far at this have looked far from seamless - my vision of my talking dog christmas card is far exceeding my ability unfortunately. Does anyone have any tips for me on how to best achieve my dream?

legal video conversion

roue — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:32:10 -0800

I'd like to legally automate the conversion of quicktime .mov files videos to .flv, providing a drop box service, preferably under linux, but I'm getting tripped up on the first and last parts My users are requesting a simple video ingestion/conversion service and they don't want to use YouTube in an attempt to maintain control of their content.

There are plenty of tools that will take video file format x, y, and z and convert them to H.263/Sorensen Spark/H.264 .flv files. The obvious choices are ffmpeg / mencoder / vlc project libs. Unfortunately, to accomplish the conversion they have reverse engineered U.S. patent restricted commercial codecs (please correct me if I'm wrong). Since I'll be doing this in a professional capacity, I'd like it to be completely in compliance with the law.

So I guess my question is three fold:

1. What's the cheapest way I can legally do quicktime to flv conversion?

2. If I've got a choice, what's the best codec to use for web distribution?

3. What automatable software would you recommend?

We can probably afford to spend some money, but not, for instance, the $3000 On2 wants for it's conversion tools. Also, we have Adobe CS3 Flash and Flash Video Encoder, but I was unable to find a way to script them (on Mac) to do a conversion. Last, if at all possible I'd like to avoid really hacky solutions like "this cool app that records mouse movments and lets you play them back..."

Thanks.

Good Flash player for playing Quicktime (.mov) files?

mark7570 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:28:25 -0800

Good off-the-shelf Flash player to play Quicktime (.mov) files? Or get one custom-built? I have videos of a recent event, all in Quicktime .mov format, nicely edited. I want to post them online, on a site that I host myself.

Problem, of course, is that lots of users don't have Quicktime installed, and/or the default Quicktime player isn't very friendly (starts and stops as things are buffering).

So I want to use a Flash player (like every other site with video does) to allow users a more convenient way to play the files.

The off-the-shelf Flash players I've found so far either gak on something in the format - they can't play my edited .mov file - or they degrade the quality significantly - or the UI is horrible.

Commercial video-site players, embeddable things like the Revver player, look much better, but they throw ads into the mix. I don't want ads. I'm hosting the files and am willing to pay to own the flash player.

So: is there a good off-the-shelf solution I'm missing, or is this a case where I should go out and get someone to custom-code a decent Flash player (and if so, where do I find that person)?

P.S. Yes, I've read this 2005 post about encoding Web video - figuring things have developed in the ensuing 3 years.

QuickTime? Flash? Who's talking about it?

dpcoffin — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:52:21 -0800

Videos in pdfs: Stick with QuickTime, or switch to Flash? I've been producing rich media pdfs for multi-platform CD delivery for some time now, using video clips in Quicktime format, made with FCPro and Sorenson Squeeze. Should I switch to using Flash video now that Acrobat 9, with its native support for Adobe Flash, is here, since it's supposedly far more widely distributed than QT? IS this a game-changer? Advantages? Disadvantages? Where else might I go to stimulate some discussion of the pros and cons of this new option? (Already posted at Adobe forums; no responses so far; I'm unaware of any active multimedia-in-pdf forums…)

Appreciate any comments, opinions, predictions, guesses; thanks!

What software is used to make these videos?

SampleSize — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:41:55 -0800

Are these done in Flash or something else? (click the cover to preview the videos) One Two And how about these? Three Four

Flash video in portrait?

jammed — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:15:03 -0800

Does anyone know any flash video site that supports portrait as opposed to the traditional landscape view? I'd like portrait view as default. If there isn't a site, perhaps there is a open source player that supports this (would I need to have the flash server to stream this?). Thanks in advance.

i can has mobile video?

negative1 — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:06:09 -0800

Where can I get some introductory-level information regarding video player implementation on mobile phones? I want to build a site that will play video on a variety of mobile phones. I have a non-mobile version of the site already, and all the videos are FLV format playing within a flash player, but the file & player format can be modified as necessary.

Playing flash video when a click is required to start?

zzztimbo — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:59:43 -0800

Is there any way to get a flash video to play when a click is required to start it? I would like to be able to programmatically visit a site that has a flash video and then click on the start button. I have looked into Selenium, but there doesn't seem to be an easy solution there.

CC outside the US?

breaks the guidelines? — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:05:58 -0800

Is the term “caption” or “closed caption” and the “CC in a TV” symbol commonly recognizable to non-U.S. people? Working on producing some Flash video content with English audio for which subtitles will be available in multiple languages, including European, South American, and Asian languages. Would non-English-speaking people know that the “CC” symbol in a user interface control indicates the option for subtitling?

Wikipedia says that most of the world make no distinction between “subtitles” and “captions.” Is there a standard terminology and semiology to indicate this feature as universally as possible?

YouTube videos stuck on the loading screen--how do I fix?

incandescentman — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:13:27 -0800

YouTube videos stuck on the loading screen--how do I fix? I'm running Windows XP Media Center Edition on a Dell E510. I recently installed AIM, then uninstalled it. Since then, YouTube doesn't work. I can navigate around the site, but all videos are stuck on the loading screen.

I've tried everything I can think of:

- restarting
- turning off Windows Firewall and Norton Antivirus worm protection etc.
- unintalling and reinstalling Adobe Flash
- disabling GreaseMonkey and AdBlock
- reinstalling Firefox
- trying it in IE and Opera

Nothing works.

Flash video player works fine on other video sites, such as nytimes.com and devilducky.com. Other movie sites like apple.com/trailers work fine.

Any help? Thanks in advance.

What software should I use for this very simple animation?

The Dutchman — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:19:07 -0800

Flash? After effects? Maya? Toon Boom? Something else? I want to make some very simple abstract animation videos. The simplest would be just full screens of solid colors fading slowly into each other. Slightly more complex would be the same full screens of colors fading into each other, but not all at once. That is, maybe start the fade in the center or corner, and slowly leak in the new color. Or another slightly more complex: The screen divided into multiple blocks of different color that slowly fade into other colors. Real simple, slow, mellow stuff. So, what's the right software for that? Thanks!

Flash Video Limit?

philosophistry — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:51:13 -0800

How do I fix this: too many browser windows with flash open stops YouTube from functioning I use Firefox. This all started happening after a recent update to the flash player software. Whenever I have a 10 or more tabs open, often to news sites that have flash ads, and try to watch YouTube, the videos don't start.

If I close most of the tabs and refresh the page with video, then the video works.

Is there a fix for this?

WMVs into Flv

boyinmiami — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:13:22 -0800

Please help me convert my mgp and wmv files to flash. Thanks in advance. Need a program that can take my 2-3 minute clips and make them into flv files. I can spend up to a 100 dollars on a program but freeware works. I would also like them to maintain the quality. Any recommendations? Thank you