PE6 Flash

Flash can create some pretty amazing motion and even 3D graphics.  Honestly though, I haven’t figured out exactly how I can incorporate this into my training.  There is one very important use that I have for Flash that I can see right away: convert video files into Flash files.  I use my favorite Web 2.0 tool, Udutu, for a lot of training, but it freezes when you try to upload anything except a flash file to it.

So now that I feel like I have a basic understanding of how to use Flash, I wanted to experiment with converting files.  While I grasped how to create the animations pretty quickly, I had a much harder time with this part.  I did a little more research and watched a few more tutorials on file types and it all started to become a little clearer.

I was so excited when I saw this screen!  It finally had successfully imported!

The most common Flash file types are .fla and .swf.  The .fla files are files for working within Flash and the .swf files are the “output” file, or what you would post to a website or put in other media.  I looked up Udutu’s Guide to Getting Started, and sure enough, it said it took .swf files!

Then I had to figure out how to get a video file into Flash in order to change it into a .swf file.  I found a tutorial that said that Flash took just about every kind of video and photo file type out there, but when I tried to import an iMovie file, it kept telling me that I needed to convert it with Adobe Media Encoder.  I couldn’t figure out how to do this, but finally after trying several file formats, I got lucky and was able to import a .mov file.

This is my .swf file in Udutu

I immediately turned around and exported this test file into a .swf file and was able to successfully upload it into Udutu.  I will need to work on getting faster and better quality images out of this, but at least I have a start now!