Thanks, but I want to know how to get Vegas to import swf properly. What version is Vegas 8 supposed to accept? I've gone back as far as version 4 of Flash and it is a hit and miss affair. Sometimes Vegas shows all of the swf but often it cuts the swf at some arbitrary point. Is Vegas 9 any better?

Kit

Vegas Movie Studio 9 imports swf files.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudio/videoediting

EB

Gotta read the fine print though.

Import Flash™ (.swf) files** directly into Vegas Movie Studio software. The vector-based .swf files can be scaled to any project size without loss of resolution. Create complex text animations and other effects for projects using any editing tool that supports .swf export.

** ActionScripting, motion video, and audio not supported.

Mike

My understanding is that you can set flash to export for flash player 4. You won't get actionscript support but Vegas can't interpret actionscript anyway. This gets you your basic animation, text, tweens, bouncing balls, all that. I've never had Vegas clip the end off an animation.

If you mean that you've embedded a movie file in a SWF file, that's a different matter. SWF files have a limit to the number of frames they can contain.

Rob Mack

Here is what the Knowledgebase has to say on the subject of Vegas's strictly limited SWF support:

Q: What are the details of the SWF support in Vegas and Vegas Movie Studio? Does it support all SWF files?

A: The purpose of SWF support in Vegas and Vegas Movie Studio is to read .swf files for use as animated text. Flash 6 supports several kinds of actions, embedded movies etc, plus audio. Vegas only supports opening .swf vector files for use as text; no audio, no compressed movies, nothing besides vector text.

Mark

I guess that means rendering a project to Flash (swf) is not possible, then.

Ben

Vegas has never supported rendering to Flash/Shockwave.

This discussion is about importing .swf files.

Mark

Ben,

Rendering to SWF directly from Vegas is not possible.

However, using http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/DebugMode's Frameserver[/link], serving to an external SWF encoder (like ON2's Flix Pro) from the Vegas timeline, you can.

Tom

You mean rendering a Vegas project to swf? I think you have a misunderstanding of what the swf format is all about.

The swf format holds the assets and code of an animation. The swf format is very programmable and can consist of an animation, an interactive animation (like a game or a simulator), or it can behave like a software application. The swf file can load data and assets from external sources, and it can send data to external sources.

The playing of movies is just a small subset of what a swf file can do. In the most typical movie application, a swf file will contain the transport controls and software code to play an external movie file (In this case you need two files - the SWF and the movie)

Movie files can also be embedded as an asset into a swf file (Just like image files, an sound files can be compiled into the swf). In the past this limited the movie file. A SWF file has a limit to the number of frames it can contain so this necessarily limits the length of a movie file that is embedded in the SWF. SWF files have also had trouble keeping audio and video streams in sync. Both of these limitations are overcome by keeping the movie file outside of the swf file, in which case the swf is just a player. (Actually, the swf file becomes a movie player being played by the Flash player. You've got three layers here with the Flash player playing the SWF file which then plays the movie file.)

The appeal of embedding a movie into an SWF file is that you then only have one file to hand off to the client. You don't have to be concerned that the client will fail to upload the movie, or that they'll put the movie in a folder that the SWF isn't coded to look for. Nor do you need to worry that the client's CMS will break the relationship between the SWF and it's non-embedded assets.

To sum it up, Vegas supports the importation of vector animations in SWF format. Examples of this are text or shape animations without Actionscript.

As far as I know there's no way to export video from Vegas to Flash's video container, which is FLV, not SWF. However, there may be solutions available for purchase that will add FLV output to Vegas. And the most modern versions of the Flash Player can support h.264 in addition to FLV files. I don't particularly know how to do this in Flash but most people here seem to be using third party applications that automate the task and create very limited types of swf files.

Rob Mack

Tried Super yet?

Yes, Super will allow you to extract the embedded video from a swf file so that you can edit it in Vegas.

I don't know if this works with all variations of what you might find in a SWF or FLV file, but it definitely works if the content is h.264.

You shouldn't expect Vegas to work with swf-as-video directly but it'd be nice if it could do something with FLV files.

Rob Mack

No I haven't, and I doubt that I will. Their site didn't work with javascript disabled. Also, I'm not really sure how it helps me. Am I supposed to convert a swf file through Super before importing into Vegas?

Kit

Thanks, Rob. I think the clipping was a function of re-editing the swf file and saving with the same name. Saving with a new name deleting the old file and bringing in teh new one seems to have avoided the clipping problem.

Kit

Thanks Mark, I've been making animations in swf format, soundtrack in Acid and putting it together in Vegas. It works, in a fashion.

Kit

Yes, you're supposed to convert a swf file to an editable format before you import it. Assuming that the swf has a movie file embedded in it, of course.

If the swf just has vector objects in it then you don't need to convert it.

Rob Mack

Does anyone have any experience with converting a video file to flash. I am trying to make Flash To Video Studio 3.0 work and so far I am not having a good customer experience.

Of courns Super will convert the file but I need a solution for a project that needs to be contained in an embedded swf player player with the player and controls along with a backplate or snapshot image. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.