Dead After Long Time Recording?

Although SCREEN2SWF is designed to recording minutes level short tutorials, but it still support video over hours in theory.

Some users report that SCREEN2SWF dead after, for example, half hour or 1 hour, recording. And we spend some time to find what’s wrong and turns out to find no error in their.

The reason the users feel no response is, SCREEN2SWF will process a ‘parsing’ work after recording to build an index table for editing. This will take several seconds if the video is not too long. But when the video is over 1 hour, this process could take over 1 minute to go. And during it, user can not click on any button, looks like dead in interface. Look carefully, the progress bar are still running until parsing over.

Full-screen replay for both SWF and EXE format

The new released v2.8 SCREEN2SWF/SCREEN2EXE adds new features to support full-screen replay. It is a very useful feature for demonstration.

For SWF format, click on ‘Setup’ button of ‘Save Page’, the last step, you will see 2 new options as following,

image

Check/Uncheck each  of them can enable/disable the full-screen and information button of flash program. If you will insert this SWF file into HTML manually, please notice that, ‘allowFullScreen’ property of the object MUST be true, like this,

<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,124,0" width=600 height=460>

<param name= "Movie" value="a.swf">
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true">
<embed src="a.swf" width="600" height="460" loop="0"
quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" menu="false" allowFullScreen="true">
</embed></OBJECT>

Self-play exe movie has full-screen button too, and viewer can click to switch to full screen, and press ‘ESC’ to back to normal status.

Using JavaScript to Show different flash demo on one page

Normally on one html page we place only one flash demo. But sometime, we have more than one video demo for one product, for example, we have 100 videos, so it is obviously we can not build 10 pages for each of them. Is their any easy way we can put them on one page with a index that visitor can select and switch between them?

Using a dynamic page will be easy to do such a job, but a static HTML page could be better. Is that possible? The answer is yes, for example,

http://www.stepok.net/eng/tutorials.htm?SWF=rc_compose&width=640&height=574

The above page has 7 videos created by SCREEN2SWF, an index link lying on right of the page. It is an html page but receive parameters from URL. If this is what your need, the following article will show you how to do this.

First we need a JavaScript file named swfobject.js which can create flash object dynamically.

It is an open source JavaScript under MIT license, you can get it at:

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

With this script file, we have to add some code on the page,

First, a function between <HEAD> and </HEAD>

<script type="text/javascript">
function getQueryString(name)
{
if(location.href.indexOf("?")==-1 || location.href.indexOf(name+’=')==-1)
{ return ”; }

var queryString = location.href.substring(location.href.indexOf("?")+1);
var parameters = queryString.split("&");
var pos, paraName, paraValue;

for(var i=0; i<parameters.length; i++)
{
pos = parameters[i].indexOf(’=');
if(pos == -1) { continue; }
paraName = parameters[i].substring(0, pos);
paraValue = parameters[i].substring(pos + 1);
if(paraName == name)
{ return unescape(paraValue.replace(/\+/g, " ")); }
}
return ”;
};
</script>

Then, at the place you want to show the flash,

<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
var so = new SWFObject('<path>' + getQueryString("SWF") + '.swf', "swffile", getQueryString("width"), getQueryString("height"), "9,0,124,0", "#000000");
so.write("flashcontent");
// ]]>
</script>

Assume this html is
http://www.yourwebsite.com/showflash.htm,
now you upload your SWF file to the folder in ‘<path>’, for example path could be ‘tutorial/’, now you have a video named “awf”, with widh=500,height=350. The you upload to :

http://www.yourwebsite.com/tutorial/a.swf

After that, the link for this swf file is,

http://www.yourwebsite.com/showflash.htm?SWF=a&width=500&height=350

And when visit the above URL, the navigator will automatically load the “a.swf” with right size. Now you can upload the rest of other videos, just changing the parameters can visit each of them.

The size is important, remember to set it right. It is controlled by SCREEN2SWF-Save-Flash setup dialog.

A Wallpaper on Desktop Brings Bad Quality

Some users complain that the quality of movie is not good, and send us samples. We find that it is the reason is same, that they have not disabled their desktop wallpaper before recording.

Our recorder based on an optimized compressing algorithm will check the contents of recording. If a photo, image is find on most area, it will adaptively choose a lossy compression way to process it instead of lossless for buttons, icons and menu… So, the quality drops.

Wallpaper is not necessary but costs more file size when illustrating something to others. We recommend disabling it before recording for 2 reasons. First, the quality improves a lot. Second, the smaller output file.

Here is a comparison between use wallpaper and not.

image

Left, with wallpaper, 130K                Right, without wallpaper, 20K

[SCREEN2SWF]

An Optimized Workflow of Sound in v2.6

The new v2.6 SCREEN2SWF/SCREEN2EXE has optimized its workflow of sound to make the quality better when outputting SWF format. And, make it possible for future version to adding functions like ‘sound editing’.

The previous workflow of sound recording is,

image

You can see that when outputting SWF format, there are 2 compression operations. Each compression loss quality, so 2 processing loss double information. To improve that, in v2.6 we change it to,

image

So, the quality of sound in SWF format improved!

There is another issue we have to explain about sound in SWF. That is the sound in SWF have to be in MP3 (Mpeg Layer 3) coded. Because it is the only format that flash player supports. The MP3 format is designed for compress music, which have more high frequency information. But most sounds in a screen recording program are voice only. Then the MP3 need more bits to compress the high frequency data.

Currently, we use 8Kbps GSM coding in EXE and AVI format, which works great for voice sound. But we have to use MP3 which have at least 16Kbps (2-4 times than GSM) in SWF. That cause the size of SWF file may little bigger than a self-play EXE format. You can choose the quality of MP3 sound in v2.6, the flash set dialog to find the balance between size and quality.

SCREEN2SWF

Screen Recorder Runs on a USB Flash Disk?

Some users asked us, is that possible to license SCREEN2SWF on flash disk? The reason they need install a screen recorder on a flash disk is, when they use public computer, they may need to record something they need.

The answer is no, unfortunately, for SCREEN2SWF. Because there will be license problem to do this, and there will be ‘can not run’ problem too when install it on a removable drive. But, there is a way to do it!

As you know, SCREEN2EXE is totally free software and we allow you use it for any purpose and install on any numbers of computers/devices. And it works well on a USB flash disk. So, it is possible to install a SCREEN2EXE on flash drive and share project file with SCREEN2SWF on a registered computer. Let me show you how to do it.

First, install SCREEN2EXE to a local folder. Then, copy the following files and folder on flash drive (you need to create a folder manually). Now you have a portable screen recorder that supports ‘plug and record’ on any computer.

untittle.136x73.4.6K

After that you can uninstall the local SCREEN2EXE copy.

Next, you can connect flash disk to any computer, run SCREEN2EXE manually to record… But, remember to save the result to a project file (*.svp) instead of exe. And, please ignore the email dialog in first running; don’t leave your personal information on other computers.

Final step, when you come back to your computer where SCREEN2SWF is installed and registered. You open the project file to get everything you recorded. You can continue editing it and exporting it to any format you need. Easy, isn’t it?

Restrict Your Flash Movie to Your Website Domain

After you upload your flash file (SWF file) to you server, this file is open for visit and that also means open to downloading. Every program has its copyright that nobody should use it without your permission. So, what if some visitors download your movie in SWF format and upload it to their website without your permission? Is that possible to control the copyright of your flash movie? The answer is yes, by using the ‘URL restrict’ function of SCREEN2SWF.

untittle.351x263.27.6K

How it works?

After specify a domain or a segment of domain of your website URL, when the SWF file is load, the internal action script will check for the current URL where the SWF file uploaded. If it does not meet the condition you set, the flash will stop play and show an error message.

Let’s take a sample. You have a website A.com, now you make a tutorial movie named name.swf, you upload it to 

1) http://www.A.com/name.swf,

And you visitor can play it with this URL. Now assume you have set the restrict to ‘A.com’, when visitor X try to upload to his website with URL

2) http://www.B.com/newname.swf

The movie can not be play, because there is no substring of ‘A.com’ in the URL (2). Now you get the idea. But there is still some problem.

First, what if X change the file name to ’A.com.newname.swf’, and the URL turns to be,

3) http://www.B.com/A.com.newname.swf

Will, there is a substring of ‘A.com’ so will the URL works? Don’t worry, there is an option ‘in domain’ only for you to check on, (in default). That means the substring ‘A.com’ must exist in the domain part.

There is another issue, the movie with a URL restrict can not be played on local hard disk either. That means you can not preview it in local. I put it here to say, it is not a bug. And it also means your visitors can not download and play your movie to their hard disk.

You may ask “what if I authorize a website to use my SWF file? How can I remove the restriction?” Well, that’s easy if you have same your movie to a project file before. Load it, change the restriction to the website you authorizing, and export again. So the new movie can only played on the authorized website only.

[SCREEN2SWF]

Better Looking Annotation Object

We have updated the looking of annotation object in both SCREEN2EXE and SCREEN2SWF. Annotation is a very useful tool for a screen recorder to show visitors what happens now. Let’s compare the old version and current:

annotation

Change the color, font and transparent you can create more variants.

annotation_var

You can update your old *.svp projects by loading them, select each annotation object, and make some changing( to update the image ) in this new version.

[SCREEN2SWF/EXE]

Convert Powerpoint to Flash

There are tools that convert powerpoint to Flash files (*.ppt –> *.swf) in file level. But most of them can not combine you audio with the pages and readers have to click on each page for each step.

Now, it is possible to convert Powerpoint to flash with sound, and making it like a real speech. The trick is using SCREEN2SWF to just record them all.

When you present a presentation, we may take many rehearsals before real speech. When you are ready, you can run SCREEN2SWF, set it to capture all and ‘include audio’ from microphone. Then, open and play the powerpoint file and click ‘Start recording’.

Now, act as you are making the presentation to your audiences. When finished, press F10 to stop recording. You don’t need any editing before directly save it to SWF file. That’s all, a Powerpoint file now becoming a flash video with sound.

The following sample is a testing of this idea, BTW, SCREEN2EXE user can also convert powerpoint to a self-play exe file by same way.

This is good idea because now you have a file to share the presentation with your audiences and publish it on web for more visits.

—————————————————————-

[SCREEN2SWF]

Add Water Mark to Movie

Although SCREEN2SWF already have a option in setup to prevent others use your movie outside your website.(The ‘URL restrict’ option), you may still need to add water mark to your movie.

A typical water-mark is to type on it a copyright text of your website. You can do this by add a ‘Annotation’ object, and set period to whole movie, set ‘Opacity’ and disable the cloud. Like this,
Water_mark_text

 watermark_text_set

You can also use a advanced way of transparent image. First prepare a image with mask in tools like Photoshop. The format can be GIF or PNG which support transparent. The use ‘Image’ object instead of annotation. Like this,

A image with mask,(you can save it as GIF or PNG)

logomask

Insert as image for preview,

water_mask_logo

It is easy, isn’t it?