I have no experience here and have a client requesting some simple flash animations to go along with an illustration of the same object.
Can I render out to QT and then have it converted to a Flash animation…if so, what app will do that?
Thanks,
Paul
Hello Paul:
If you are refering to converting your Quicktime movie (.mov) to a Flash Video vile (.flv) the Flash 8 application has an excellent application included called "Flash Video Encoder.
I’ve converted some videos with it and I’m happy with the size vs quality it gives.
You can download the 30 day demo from the Adobe site and try it out yourself. I think After Effects has a flash video export option ( I don’t have a direct experience with it)
If its not too heavy post it somewhere and I can convert it for you ( in case you don’t want to download the Flash Demo). I’m gessing there should be a free or cheap converter in the web out there but again I use the one provided my Adobe/Macromedia ( since I’m guessing supports the latest Flash version)
Now… if you are refering to tranforming your .mov file to vector files… that’s a different ticket and the results may not be what you want… and not sure if there’s a converter that does that…
Another option on the .flv file is maybe try YouTube.com ( I haven’t uploaded anything there) but I know it converts your file to a flash video file ( maybe there’s a way to download it and use it somewhere else…) Don’t know what will be the final use for your client…
Hope it helps or starts you in the right direction
Good luck
fjv
mmh… after reading your post again.
I’m seeing your original client’s animation is a flash vector file…? ( swf)
Then you should keep it all there… in Flash
If you want to mix a quicktime ( yours) and a swf (his) import your .mov in to flash
If you have flash MX 2004 or 8 it has the video encoder I mentioned and you can then export as .flv (flash video) or (swf) … This will work for the web … again not sure what will be the final ouput…
But if its for video ( you can render from flash to quicktime 30 fps) and then edit in FCP or after effects and burn it to a cd or DVD…
Hope it isn’t more confusing… 
fjv
Thanks for all of the info.
The only animation would be the one I would do in EI which would then be needed to be converted to a flash animation for the web.
Sounds like there shouldn’t be any trouble to do what is needed.
Paul
Paul –
Are they requesting something that will play in the Flash player or specifically requesting vector output in Flash format?
As mentioned above, the new On2 codec in Flash 8 is superb and you’ll get a FLV file which is Flashs video file format. Great quality considering the file size. Flash 8 comes with its own video encoder, and you can also get a On2 encoder from On2 directly or Sorenson that supports VBR and 2-pass encoding so you can squeeze every bit of quality out of your original quicktime file.
It was mentioned on PostForum that you could also use a frame-by-frame output and use something like Streamline or similar app to convert your bitmap into vector artwork that could be imported into Flash and would be vector. However, when I played with that method in the past, I didn’t get consistant results from frame-to-frame but it depends on your source. You could also import a bitmap sequence into Flash and convert it directly in Flash using its Trace Bitmap tool, but that would be a long process.
I guess it comes down to what your client really needs. If they need a Flash animation (all vector), then you could look at the process above or look at doing all the animation in Flash directly. Animating in Flash directly would give you the best results possible for a pure vector animation (small file size, better control). Although, it is possible to create a vector animation that has too many vector lines and actually bogs the Flash player. In my opinion, Erain’s Flash rendering engine does this and makes all but the simpliest animations too CPU hungry. If they just need an animation that can be played in the Flash browser plugin, then you have the FLV option as well. Flash FLV files are the Flash video format and can play back to version 7 of the Flash plugin (or v6 if its streamed from Flash media services).
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