Topic: Anyone knows good free video converters ?

Posted under General

I'm looking for a video converter for SWF files
like able record it into a mp4 video

I use "AVCFree" but that doesn't convert swf

and with no watermarks...
I found one swf to video program that works well
but it water marks things you convert.

Updated by PheagleAdler

http://www.online-convert.com/

a general media converter. though if you want to use it to converts stuff off youtube you'll first have to download the videos or whatever via a different site first as this one doesn't do youtube links... that they're aware of. ;)

edit: derp, i just responded to the thread title not the first post. my bad.

actually, i wonder... yeah, that site can convert swf to mp4.

i went and used an old copy of this to test it and surprisingly, it improved the visual quality too.

left is SWF, right is MP4

Updated by anonymous

Use https://www.free-decompiler.com/flash/ to rip out the flv files
To convert the flv files, https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html is a good graphical conversion
If you like command line though, https://www.ffmpeg.org is great
You might also be able to use http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ to record the flash, which may be useful for rastering be for graphics, but you should extract flv files if present and convert them to preserve aspect ratio and resolution.

Updated by anonymous

Lance_Armstrong said:
http://www.vip-video-converter.com/articles/how-can-i-convert-swf-to-mp4-using-vlc/

I wouldn't use VLC. I have seen so many videos corrupted and insanely bad quality when using that.

Just like with playing regular video files, VLC is best at doing everything, but isn't best in anything. If it works for your particular situation and nothing seems wrong, at that point yeah go ahead.

E: Does VLC play SWF files? I know MPC-HC does.

treos said:
http://www.online-convert.com/

a general media converter. though if you want to use it to converts stuff off youtube you'll first have to download the videos or whatever via a different site first as this one doesn't do youtube links... that they're aware of. ;)

edit: derp, i just responded to the thread title not the first post. my bad.

actually, i wonder... yeah, that site can convert swf to mp4.

Unless you quickly need to convert your phones MP4 video to AVI or your DOCX document to RTF so they can play on schools windows XP machines, I would highly suggest avoiding online converters. Usually quality on these are highly variable and usually for the worse as higher quality requires more horsepower and bandwidth which free services are trying to save on.

Also just a tip with youtube, they do already compress stuff really heavily so you do want to avoid further conversions of anything from there. Youtube does serve all their videos in both h264 MP4 and VP9 WebM, both formats should play on almost any device that isn't over 10 years old. So simply download the format you want it, don't convert. Of course they also have stuff like 3GP if you really want to be able to download videos to your old nokia phone.

stalkerd said:
I'm looking for a video converter for SWF files
like able record it into a mp4 video

I use "AVCFree" but that doesn't convert swf

and with no watermarks...
I found one swf to video program that works well
but it water marks things you convert.

This actually depents a lot.

Many recent year flash files are actually simply video files inside flash container. What in these cases you want to do is use SWF decompiler of some sort, JPEXS is free one you can use (also good if you want to get rid of interactive buttons if recording). With this, you can simply extract the .flv video file and convert it however you want with regular video converters.
Sometimes the video is actually several image files, at which point simply handle them as image sequence and take frame rate from flash files properties.

If it's actual flash file, as in there's tons of assets, interactivity, vectors used, etc. then I have not seen any better software than Newgrounds Swivel. No watermarks, no frame drops, quality goes up to lossless, really good audio, automatic detection of flash lenght and much more good for absolutely free. Windows only and not updated, but I rarely bump into issues.

As for video conversion, I cannot stop recommending ffmpeg as it simply does everything you want it to do and more, altough only major issue is that it is command line tool. Altough there are lots of graphical frontends for it, I cannot recommend any as I don't use any, but I do know at least SUPER, QwinFF, FFmpegYAG and AVANTI. Then there are specialized tools for single fileformats like really popular handbrake to create MP4 files and tons of WebM creators.

Updated by anonymous

most online video converters aren't worth their salt. try:

ffmpeg -i file.sfw file.mp4

if you're not on Linux, you are free to go through the hell that is the Windows CLI and try to get ffmpeg on that.

for more fine-tuned options, you can run Handbrake (a GUI program) on the mp4 file.

Updated by anonymous

Thanks for the replies
i'll try those

now does anyone know any goo video editing programs?

I tried movavi video editor but it isn't fully free
anyone knows one that is?
trying to find one that you can smooth filter videos

Updated by anonymous

stalkerd said:
Thanks for the replies
i'll try those

now does anyone know any goo video editing programs?

I tried movavi video editor but it isn't fully free
anyone knows one that is?
trying to find one that you can smooth filter videos

even if you're desperate for a video editor, don't download adobe_premiere_pro_crack6390.exe.torrent from the pirate bay; it's not worth the trouble, and it's a barely-functional piece of proprietary software anyway.

my favorite simple editor is the cross-platform Avidemux; it's easy enough for even a beginner to learn, and it helps you get a handle on the plugin-based architecture of a lot of video editing software.

even simpler than avidemux is OpenShot, being the iMovie of open-source editors. be warned that it's very basic in functionality, only able to fulfill the simplest of editing functions.

for more serious work, i use Kdenlive, which has more plugins than you'll even know what to do with. please understand there's a steep learning curve involved, and it can be fiddly with things such as frame rates and resolutions, so only go into it if you'll willing to learn how it works.

sometimes your video player cannot handle the output of the files you give it, which is especially bad with the dinosaur that is VLC. mpv has played every file i've thrown at it without issue. if something goes wrong when playing with mpv, your video file is corrupt.

sadly i don't know how to smooth filter videos, so you'll have to try each one and see what you like. all of the above are free and open-source software, so you'll never have to pay for them. as a bonus, new features are added every few months.

basically try out Avidemux, and if that doesn't suit your needs, try out Kdenlive.

Updated by anonymous

Mario69 said:
Unless you quickly need to convert your phones MP4 video to AVI or your DOCX document to RTF so they can play on schools windows XP machines, I would highly suggest avoiding online converters. Usually quality on these are highly variable and usually for the worse as higher quality requires more horsepower and bandwidth which free services are trying to save on.

Also just a tip with youtube, they do already compress stuff really heavily so you do want to avoid further conversions of anything from there. Youtube does serve all their videos in both h264 MP4 and VP9 WebM, both formats should play on almost any device that isn't over 10 years old. So simply download the format you want it, don't convert. Of course they also have stuff like 3GP if you really want to be able to download videos to your old nokia phone.

only time i convert youtube videos is when it's a music track. other than that i just download them.

you're right about the compression though. a 5+ minute youtube video at 480p can have some surprisingly small file sizes.

fewrahuxo said:
sometimes your video player cannot handle the output of the files you give it, which is especially bad with the dinosaur that is VLC. mpv has played every file i've thrown at it without issue. if something goes wrong when playing with mpv, your video file is corrupt.

o.O never heard of mpv before and i still wonder why youtube decides to take vlc down with it when the video player dies.

uh...what link do i use on the installation page to get and use this mpv program?

Updated by anonymous

treos said:
only time i convert youtube videos is when it's a music track. other than that i just download them.

Youtube stores audios seperately, so you can also just download the audio track with zero conversion. Alternatively you can copy the stream directly out from video container (ffmpeg -i youtubevideo.mp4 -c:a copy music.aac) which, well, copies it without modifications or conversions. AAC should be relatively common and supported format as I remember using it with my MP3 player which didn't even have screen at elementary school.

Updated by anonymous

treos said:
only time i convert youtube videos is when it's a music track. other than that i just download them.

you're right about the compression though. a 5+ minute youtube video at 480p can have some surprisingly small file sizes.

o.O never heard of mpv before and i still wonder why youtube decides to take vlc down with it when the video player dies.

uh...what link do i use on the installation page to get and use this mpv program?

for your conversion problem, you can install youtube-dl and activate it like so, which will download and automatically extract audio from YouTube videos:

youtube-dl -x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCspzg9-bAg

mpv streaming will also work with YouTube if you have the latest version of youtube-dl installed, though YouTube likes to make it difficult to stream their videos, so you might have to update your software from time to time.

mpv has been gaining in popularity the past few years because it's a dead-simple player with a lot of options for geeks, playing any file instantly with a GUI that does everything it needs to and nothing more.

the reason you haven't heard of it is because it doesn't do any advertising; its popularity is in large part due to shilling on 4chan's /g/ board.

you can install it from the installation page and choosing whichever link has the newest version, which seems to be the SourceForge page if you're on Windows.

Updated by anonymous

fewrahuxo said:
for your conversion problem, you can install youtube-dl and activate it like so, which will download and automatically extract audio from YouTube videos:

youtube-dl -x https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCspzg9-bAg

mpv streaming will also work with YouTube if you have the latest version of youtube-dl installed, though YouTube likes to make it difficult to stream their videos, so you might have to update your software from time to time.

mpv has been gaining in popularity the past few years because it's a dead-simple player with a lot of options for geeks, playing any file instantly with a GUI that does everything it needs to and nothing more.

the reason you haven't heard of it is because it doesn't do any advertising; its popularity is in large part due to shilling on 4chan's /g/ board.

you can install it from the installation page and choosing whichever link has the newest version, which seems to be the SourceForge page if you're on Windows.

ok, i'll get and check out mpv later. got a couple downloads going already.

Updated by anonymous

For video encoding GUIs, I've settled on StaxRip. It's given me the least painful experience so far.

For video editors, I tried PowerDirector but the editing process was too janky and I didn't like the limited rendering quality options. I managed a simple motion tracking effect, but the process seemed much more time-consuming than it ought to have been. Next time, if there is a next time, I'll just pirate whatever fully featured industry program random Youtuber(s) recommend, like everyone else. Avidemux was great for isolating clips (video + audio) without needlessly rendering the source and damaging quality, provided that process in Avidemux is compatible with the source video format.

For video players, I was on MPC-HC for the longest time, but its development had basically stalled for years. Then its maintainers announced and released its final build, so I switched over (hardly) to MPC-BE. I don't care that new people supposedly volunteered to take over. To "properly" setup MPC-BE with filters, I followed this guide. Beyond that, my madVR configuration carried over without effort. I poked around SVP and balked. I didn't observe the purportedly amazing difference (good stuff disabled from auto-config?), and I decided that I didn't want to juggle yet another quality-performance (+ GPU fan loudness) consideration. So SVP doesn't run on startup and I don't open it. MadVR and friends are enough.

Updated by anonymous

so... mpv downloaded > unzipped > started up...

well, for starters, there's no menu or interface anywhere with this program. it just pops up a window with the message "drop files or URLs to play them here". SO... *drags and drops a random MP3 music file* ...lol resulting error

and this, fewrahuxo, is with the newest 64-bit (top of the list there) version.

so, how is this superior to VLC? this thing is unstable and is lacking any form of GUI. well, i can play mp4 with it and it seems right clicking is the pause/play function but left clicking results in the above error message and the program crashing.

i'll stick to VLC. mpv seems to be a ways off from where VLC is if this is anything to go by. that and i don't want to have to learn all the functions through trial and error due to mpv having no GUI.

Updated by anonymous

treos said:
i'll stick to VLC. mpv seems to be a ways off from where VLC is if this is anything to go by. that and i don't want to have to learn all the functions through trial and error due to mpv having no GUI.

i'm sorry that your operating system has retarded a beautiful program. i suppose

mpv file.mkv

is more complicated and hard to remember than clicking on a file to play it, but if Windows cannot handle even that, then there's nothing I can do for you.

Updated by anonymous

fewrahuxo said:
i'm sorry that your operating system has retarded a beautiful program. i suppose

mpv file.mkv

is more complicated and hard to remember than clicking on a file to play it, but if Windows cannot handle even that, then there's nothing I can do for you.

the pause/play/etc. buttons in that pic did not appear even when i had that mp4 video playing.

crashing whenever i tried to play a mp3 file, and giving runtime errors whenever i left clicked on the program... those are problems with the program, not windows. if it was a windows related issue then that windows version of mpv i tried probably wouldn't have even started up in the first place.

sorry your media player still has some kinks to work out. VLC, on the other hand, may be old but it plays just about anything i throw at it with few exceptions. and even if it does encounter a file format it can't play, it tries...just tends to freak out when it fails.

Updated by anonymous

fewrahuxo said:
even if you're desperate for a video editor, don't download adobe_premiere_pro_crack6390.exe.torrent from the pirate bay; it's not worth the trouble, and it's a barely-functional piece of proprietary software anyway.

my favorite simple editor is the cross-platform Avidemux; it's easy enough for even a beginner to learn, and it helps you get a handle on the plugin-based architecture of a lot of video editing software.

even simpler than avidemux is OpenShot, being the iMovie of open-source editors. be warned that it's very basic in functionality, only able to fulfill the simplest of editing functions.

for more serious work, i use Kdenlive, which has more plugins than you'll even know what to do with. please understand there's a steep learning curve involved, and it can be fiddly with things such as frame rates and resolutions, so only go into it if you'll willing to learn how it works.

sometimes your video player cannot handle the output of the files you give it, which is especially bad with the dinosaur that is VLC. mpv has played every file i've thrown at it without issue. if something goes wrong when playing with mpv, your video file is corrupt.

sadly i don't know how to smooth filter videos, so you'll have to try each one and see what you like. all of the above are free and open-source software, so you'll never have to pay for them. as a bonus, new features are added every few months.

basically try out Avidemux, and if that doesn't suit your needs, try out Kdenlive.

Ah thanks I will try those
Yeah i was looking for a video editor
I doubt it free to get one that let you enhance
videos, with some auto fixings or a smooth filter/effects
to smooth out blocky and pixelations.

Updated by anonymous

fewrahuxo said:
most online video converters aren't worth their salt. try:

ffmpeg -i file.sfw file.mp4

if you're not on Linux, you are free to go through the hell that is the Windows CLI and try to get ffmpeg on that.

for more fine-tuned options, you can run Handbrake (a GUI program) on the mp4 file.

The syntax is identical for ffmpeg on windows. Just:

Updated by anonymous

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