Product reviews

A closer look at the top Flash video conversion tools

How to get smaller video files, higher quality

Most of the video conversion programs you'll find on the Web use the FFmpeg open source converting engine. These programs do an adequate job at turning your desktop movies into videos that can be viewed on a Flash player.

But sometimes, adequate isn't good enough.

When you want better looking videos you'll want an enhanced conversion program that offers higher quality, without making your video files larger.

We take a look at the top four commercial conversion programs for making Flash-compatible videos.

Bear in mind that what follows applies to any Flash video player.

Understanding video formats for Flash

The Adobe Flash platform supports three basic types of video formats: Sorenson Spark FLV, On2 VP6 FLV, and H.264.

  • Sorenson Spark FLV is the most basic version. It's the one all the shareware and freeware FFmpeg-based converters use. It's compatible with Adobe Flash Player version 6 and later, and is the most common FLV format on the Web because it's been out so long.
  • On2 VP6 FLV is supported by Flash Player version 8 and later. It offers much better compression, allowing for smaller size of video files, while maintaining good quality. This is the version of FLV you should be using, if you have the choice.
  • H.264 (also called F4V when converted for Adobe Flash) is supported by Flash Player version 9, update 3 ("9r115") and later. Only a few conversion programs create properly formatted H.264 videos for use with Adobe Flash video players.

On2 Flix Standard and Pro

On2 (now owned by Google) offers two Flash video conversion programs: a low-cost Standard version ($40) with basic features, and a high-end Pro version ($250) with extended capabilities. We recommend the Standard version if your conversion needs are modest.

Both editions are capable of routine tasks, including specifying conversion parameters, and trimming off the beginning or end of the clip. The Pro edition has extra features for cropping your videos to a different size, and allows for more advanced features such as color keying (replace a video scene into an area of specified color of your main clip), and fine-tuning conversion settings.

Sorenson Squeeze for Flash

Sorenson markets a number of video converters, and offers a conversion program ($500) specifically engineered to produce FLV videos.

Sorenson Squeeze for Flash supports both Sorenson Spark and VP6 FLV, as well as H.264 encoding. This professional-grade software provides a command-line interface in addition to the Windows graphical interface.

Apple Quicktime 7 Pro

If you have Apple Quicktime 7 Pro (or are thinking of getting it) you already have a converter program capable of exporting videos to H.264 format. In the File menu choose Export, select "Movie to MPEG-4," then click the Options button. Under Video Format choose H.264. Make any other setting changes you wish, and click OK.

The file that results will not be playable through the Web until it is post-processed using MP4Box (see the sidebar below), or a similar MP4/H.264 metadata utility.

Adobe Media Encoder CS4

If you have the Adobe Flash CS4 (or later) authoring program, which creates Flash applications, you're already set up to produce videos in Sorensen Spark FLV, VP6 FLV, and H.264 formats.

Similarly, Macromedia Flash Professional 8 is capable of producing Sorensen Spark FLV and VP6 FLV videos. Adobe CS3 can produce these formats, as well as H.264 (an update to the program may be necessary).

Flash CS4 is an expensive piece of software, however, and you are not likely to purchase it just for its video encoder. However, it's good to know that if you have a copy of the software at your disposal you can use it to create all the video formats supported by the latest versions of the Adobe Flash platform.

If you only need to use the conversion features of Flash CS4 once or twice, you can download a trial version of the software, and use it at no charge for up to 30 days.

No matter what conversion tool you use, be sure it adds the right metadata information to your video files. This is the single most common reason for playback problems.

What is metadata? It's extra information packaged with the video that tells the video player such things as the width and height dimensions of the movie, and its duration. Without this information the video will likely not play well, if at all.

If the conversion tool you use doesn't provide the proper metadata, you'll need to get a utility that does it as an extra step. For FLV files we recommend FLVMDI, a free program from Manitu Group. They offer a Windows-based version that comes with a nice user interface, or you can get the basic command-line version.

For H.264 you can use a utility like MP4Box. This stuff isn't for raw beginners, so if you go the H.264 route, better to get a conversion program that specifically makes videos compatible with Flash.