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February 09, 2006

Convert Flash to Windows Media on a Mac using Snapz Pro X

If you're looking to convert a Flash embedded .SWF file to Windows Media you won't find many compression tools to help you do it. The best solution I have for this is to use a product called Snapz Pro X which allows you to do screen capture via a movie capture mode. The makers of the product, Ambrosia Software, has a free downloadable trial version on their website that you can take for a test drive.

If you capture your video via Snapz Pro X using movie capture mode you can save to, for example, the MJPEG-A codec and then convert that video to the Windows Media format using QuickTime Pro and Flip4Mac both which are not included in the Snapz Pro X product.

Here are the steps to convert and capture your video:

1. Download and install the trial version of Snapz Pro X.
2. Open your Flash video in its player.
   
3. Start the capture using Movie Capture.
   
4. Start playing your video in your Flash player.
   
5. Stop the capture and save to MJPEG-A codec at the High Quality setting.
   
6. Open your QuickTime video (with MJPEG-A codec) in QuickTime Pro and convert to Flip4Mac.

Note: If you need the audio for your video, you might have to do some adjustments to work around that. Snapz Pro X doesn't handle both video and audio capture well in most scenarios. A good solution would be to do a video only capture and then do an audio only capture and merge the two files together in QuickTime Pro.

The Snapz Pro X product is worth the buy. In addition to capturing in QuickTime formats it has many other additional features for screen capture of still image and video files.

Links
> Snapz Pro X
> Flip4Mac WMV Studio
> Get QuickTime Pro

Posted by MovingPicture at February 9, 2006 02:32 PM