Summary

If having downloaded a wonderful video, you want to control the video playing progress completely, stop playing the video in a specific time or add a preface scene for this video, how to do? It is not so difficult; we can use Sothink SWF Easy to realize what you want.

Tools Used in this Tutorial:

Sothink SWF Easy 6.2
Adobe Flash Player

This tutorial will introduce you:

1. How to Import Video into Flash Animation?
2. How to Set Canvas?
3. How to Add Playback Button for This Video?
4. How to Create a Preface Scene?
5. How to Preview This SWF?

Part One: Import Video into Flash Animation

1. Launch Sothink SWF Easy and create a new Flash animation from a blank document.

2. Click button “Import” on Toolbar to open a dialog, and then pick up a video file from the folder to import into the canvas.

3. Select the video on the canvas, and the Properties panel turns to be the one for the video. Under tab “Properties”, input “video” as the name of the video. Remember the video’s width, which is 320px.

Part Two: Set Canvas

1. Click an empty area on the canvas and then the Properties panel turns to be the one for the whole animation. Go to Properties panel, under tab Properties, set the Flash’s dimention according to the video. You may directly input the value or drag the slider besides Width and Height. Here, set Width to be 320px. Drag the video to fit the canvas and let them be like this:

Back to Top >>

Part Three:  Add Playback Button for This Video?

1. Go to panel “Resource”, input the text “button” in the search field, and then press down the key “Enter” on the keyboard or click the button “Search” besides the text. The relative search result will be listed under the search field. You can drag the scroll bar to view all the result resources.

Here we select the button named “a3″ and “a1″.

Note: If you don’t find much resources in your SWF Easy program, you may download more free Flash Resources from SWF Easy web page.

2. Drag the selected button “a3.glb” to the canvas. And then choose the button, set its properties in the its Properties panel.

a) Under tab “Properties”, set the position of the button to be: X: 35, Y: 270. And set the dimension of the button to be: Width: 50, Height: 50. For the settings, it’s both OK to input the value directly and drag the edit box to modify.

b) Click tab “Action” to add action for this button. In the events list, choose the option “release”, and then input “video.stop();” in the blank custom field. The ActionScript added here means that when click the button in the Flash animation, the video, of which name is video, will stop.

3. Drag another button “a1.glb” to the canvas. Set its properties, and input its ActionScript as “video.play();”, which means that when clicking the button in the Flash animation, the video will play.

Part Four: Create a Preface Scene

1. Go to the Main Scene panel, choose “Scene 1”, and then right-click to pop up the context-menu, and choose the option “Insert Scene”, a new scene will be placed above “Scene 1”. The new scene names itself as “Scene 2″.

2. New scene is placed in the canvas; click the button “Text” on Toolbar to input text in the new scene.

3. Drag a rectangle on the canvas, and then input the text in it. Here we input text “Watch Movie Now…”. You can set its properties, like font and size under tab “Format” in its Properties panel.

4. Still choose the text on the canvas, click the button “Add Effect” above the timeline. Select an effect from the pop-up list. Mouse over an effect here and you may preview the text effect demo of the effect. Select an effect and the text will be displayed with special effect.

5. Drag another button from Resource panel to the canvas. Here we pick up the button “blue arrow1.glb”.

6. Select this button on the canvas and go to tab “Action” in its Properties panel. Choose event “release” and click the button “+a” to pop up a context-menu, choose the option “Goto scene…”. Then it pops up dialog “Goto scene” for you to set which scene will be swithed to when clicking button “blue arrow 1″ in the Flash animation. Here we select “Scene 1″.

7. Choose “Scene 2” in the Main Scene panel and the Properties panel turns to be the one of Scene 2. under tab “Action”, choose event “Enter Scene” and click the button “+a” to pop up the context-menu, choose the option “stop”. It means when the Scene 1 is finished playing and it is to play Scene 2, the Flash animation stops.2

Part Five: Preview Flash Animation

Click button “Preview” on Toolbar and you may preview the Flash animation created. Check it and modify the Flash animation if needed after previewing.

For more Sothink SWF Easy tutorials, please click here to view >>

Here is a review from a user of Sothink SWF Easy:

“The installation of Sothink SWF Easy is easy and intuitive, you can place the program files where you want them. There is a small thing that Sothink products do that I appreciate, they don’t assume that you want Desktop and Quick Launch icons they ask. Plus Sothink products allow you the ability to put their products under the Start Menu Programs that you prefer.

When you first start Sothink SWF Easy you are informed it is a 30 day evaluation product. More than fair.

When you first start Sothink SWF Easy you are given a Wizard type Window with these choices, Blank Document, Album, Banner, and Navigation Buttons. You are given the option of disabling this window at startup.

First off the Album, in the first window you are given two choices of albums flip, or normal, I tried out flip. First I selected my photos, next my page size, my covers (front and back) and background. Then Create. I was then told: After this wizard finishes, please use “File->Publish” menu to publish the album. Does that sound easy enough to you to create a professional looking Flash Album? Golly I sure hope it does because I’m sure impressed.

Next the Banner Wizard. First select from a number of templates. Then in the next window you are given the option of customizing the banner elements or generate the banner now and edit the elements yourself later. I picked the first option. The next window lets you select the Background and Size Settings. After that a series of windows to edit the text. Then the url to link to and the Target settings. That was it after in pushed the Create, I got this in about 10 seconds: After this wizard finishes, please use “File->Publish” menu to publish the banner. When I did that I was given three choices: Export Flash movie (*.swf), Insert Flash movie (*.swf) to HTML file, View or copy HTML code. So in the making of the banner, cool templates, easy to customize, great export options.

Then I tried out the navigation buttons option. You are first given the choice a whole bunch of really neat buttons to base yours on. I created three buttons with of course different text and leading to three different urls in about 30 seconds. When I was done I was told that my next step was to do File/Publish. When I did that I was given three choices: Export Flash movie (*.swf), Insert Flash movie (*.swf) to HTML file, View or copy HTML code. Just like in the other two great button templates easy to use professional results.

In conclusion Sothink SWF Easy really lives up to it’s name, it is really easy to use. Plus it gives you professional results, The price is right. I heartily recommend it.”

It is very appreciated that the SWF Easy user wrote such a greate review. SWF Easy is always looking forward to hearing users’ voice. Download Sothink SWF Easy right now and tell us what do you think about it!

Below contents are excerpted from this article:

Sothink SWF Catcher for IE — Capture Flash SWF fast for free!

“Sothink SWF Catcher for IE is a free Flash tool from, yup, you guessed it, Sothink. Basically it adds a button to your explorer toolbar which enables you to extract and save multiple Flash based charts, presentations, e-cards, games and Flash movies from your browser. With only few clicks you can store your favorite Flashes easily. You can download Sothink SWF Catcher for IE and try it out for free first.”

The above content is copied from the blog at www.webdesignmo.com. Thanks to the site admin to share his valuable software experience with us.

Other free Flash design tools are also listed in that blog post as follows:

Wix.COM
OPEN LAZLO
ADOBE FLASH PLAYER 10
FLASH PERFECTION
KIRUPA
ADOBE TUTORIALZ
FIRMA STYLE
NICK AD
AGWNCY NET

View the complete article about all popular free flash tools >>

Other Flash capture tools

If the Flash fans prefer to use Firefox instead of IE, Sothink SWF Catcher for Firefox is provided with 100% free.

Download Flash SWF cacher for Firefox >>

If the Flash fans would like to capture Flash SWF in all browsers, Sothink Web Video Downloader Stand-alone is the best choice. This video download tool can catch Flash SWF animation from almost all popular browsers, such as IE, Firefox, Opera, Maxthon. Sothink Web Video Downloader Stand-alone version can also capture many formats of video files besides capturing Flash files.

Download capturing Flash SWF in all browsers >>

About Sothink

Sothink is trademark of SourceTec Software Co., LTD. The company specializes in developing Flash tools for web developers and design-professionals. Flash products include Sothink SWF Quicker, Sothink SWF Easy, Sothink Photo Album Maker, Sothink SWF to Video Converter and Video Encoder for Adobe Flash. If you are interested in those Flash products, please feel free to visit at http://www.sothink.com/.