Flash has long been the standard for creating rich and engaging multimedia content on the web. But as more and more creative folks are discovering, Flash can make the sometimes daunting jump from web to video a relatively simple and inexpensive task. And the results are pretty darn good…

In addition to the cost benefits, being able to take your web-ready Flash pieces and quickly create professional looking video from them allows you to cross-purpose work you’ve done once for two pretty distinct mediums. Now that’s value.

Sure, you’re probably saying “I can export to Quicktime right from inside Flash!”. Yes, Flash lets you export your movies to Quicktime natively but the problem is that when you watch the video you can just tell it’s Flash. It’s got that flat and synthetic look. If you saw it on a TV or DVD you’d think it was amateur. Plus, Flash doesn’t give you a lot of options when exporting video when you consider all the different aspect ratios, square pixels, yadda yadda yadda.

So what I’m going to do is offer up my list of “must have” tools for converting Flash to (or integrating it with) video. With this bag of tricks in your corner you’ll end up with professional looking broadcast-quality results.

1. Macromedia Flash
   This one’s pretty obvious. Can’t do much without it.
2. Flash MX Design for TV and Video
   This book covers a lot of material from both sides – Flash people looking to create for TV and traditional animators who might consider the possiblities of Flash. Topics include broadcast production basics to sound, animation techniques, video exporting, and postproduction. There are some excellent case studies and lots of good information for the traditional Flash user who’s looking to understand the differences between creating for web and TV.
3. Adobe Premiere Pro
   Premiere Pro is a pretty basic tool compared to some of Adobe’s other digital video products like Final Cut Pro and After Effects, but let’s not sell it short. It’s a great nonlinear video editing application that users familiar with Flash’s timeline and Photoshop’s GUI shouldn’t have too much difficulty jumping right into.
4. SWF2Video Plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro
   Premiere doesn’t natively import SWF movies (though this might change in the next version of Premiere with the acquisition of Macromedia) so this little plug-in developed by FlashAnts comes to the rescue. Now you can import SWF movies and Premiere treats them just like any other video format. It also retains SWF alpha channels, so you can overlay your Flash on top of video clips. This is really useful for titling and on-screen graphics. The downside is that it can only import Flash 7 SWF files and lower – sorry no Flash 8. The double downside (which I discovered after pulling most of my hair out) is that you have to have the Flash 7 plugin installed in IE. If you upgrade to Flash Player 8, this plugin will no longer work and Premiere will crash uncontrollably. Don’t worry, you can have Flash Player 8 installed on Firefox (or any other non-IE browser, I assume).
5. ReelSmart Motion Blur
   Without this one, I’d say we’re about 90% of the way to getting something that really looks professional. So far, Premiere allowed us to import our SWF files (integrate them with video and audio if we wish) and export them as video in a multitude of different formats. But we’re still facing that inherent flatness of Flash. That’s where this last tool comes in and I must say it’s my personal favourite, because it’s that last 10% that makes such a huge difference. With this After Effects compatible plugin (works in AE, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and a tonne of other digital video editors) you can apply motion blur to your SWF animations. Why would you want to do that? Well, when you move something from point A to point B in Flash, it moves in steps (frame by frame) until it reaches it’s destination. At each step, it looks the same as it does standing still. While this does create the illusion of motion when played back, this illusion can be enhanced greatly with a little motion blur. This plugin interprets the animation that’s happening in your video and creates composite blurred frames to replace your original ones. While my explanation might not get the point across, the results speak for themselves. See the “with and without” comparison.Notice how the one on the left looks much more fluid and life-like, like it was shot with film? The motion looks a lot more realistic.

   Now of course everything comes with drawbacks and this plug-in is no exception. Unfortunately, you can’t apply motion blur to movies with transparency. So drop that alpha channel and make sure your SWFs are 100% opaque throughout. Second, applying this plug-in greatly increases rendering time, so keep that in mind. Speaking of rendering, you’ll want to make sure that when you do export that you turn off interlacing (i.e. tell Premiere that the footage has no fields or is “progressive”). This is very important because otherwise you’ll end up with those mice teeth lines all over the place.

And that’s my personal Flash to video toolbox. It might sound like a complicated process, but once you have all the software set up it’s really quick and easy to go from SWF to video. As I mentioned above, the only thing that takes considerable time is the rendering.

For all of us who are familiar with Flash and it’s well-known web capabilities, this really opens the door to a whole new realm of creative possibilities.