Covert SWF to APK | Torrent creation and seeding (file hosting) Mirroring of 4chan images | Creation of flash loops | File Server

| Insight | imgtxt | | GifShooter | Stuff |

Covert SWF to APK Due to new API requirements on Android this is likely to no longer work on new devices. Start by seeing of you can install air.apk, if that doesn't work none of the APKs generated by swfchan will work on your Android device. Even if the site's APK generation was fixed Adobe's AIR app would remain outdated. Discussion thread. Here you can automatically convert a flash to an Android OS APK file so that you can play the SWF file on your phone just like any other app. + Requires Adobe AIR to be installed on your phone (a free download on the Market). Note that you must have Android 2.2 or higher to be able to install AIR. + Only ActionScript 3 is supported. SWF files that uses ActionScript 2 can still be used, however its script will not work (so for example this will work alright for a AS2 flash animation that doesn't depend that much on code, while a AS2 flash game will not work at all). I've put some playback controls in the APK though so you can still pause/seek in AS2 SWF files if you want to. + Phones are not yet powerful enough to handle SWF even close to as well as a typical cheap computer can. CPU and GPU issues put aside there is often big memory issues, especially in games. But give it a few years and the newest phones can take it. + The only permission that the APK will have is WAKE LOCK (to prevent the screen from dimming). The SWF is not even allowed to access the Internet, so no damage can be done to you or your phone. Note that the app may still be able to open external links in you phone's browser. + The APK is signed with an Anonymous certificate that expires 24 years after creation. This means that you can't upload the APK file to the Google Android Market (they require it last at least 25 years). This is because people shouldn't be able to use this to sell other people's work on the market. + AS3 flash games should work 100%, given that the game doesn't have some kind of you-can't-play-until-we-show-you-this-ad loader. But don't expect your phone to be able to handle that cool AS3 game with lots of effects and graphics that you've played so much, it isn't optimized for phones and will probably require more RAM than your device has to offer. But by all means feel free to try and see if it works. + I made this to be used just-for-fun, not for anybody to make money out of it. Use it to put something short and funny on your phone to lively up the party you're going to. Remember that this is new and experimental, you're doing it at your own risk (though it shouldn't be any risk at all since the application won't have any permissions to do anything bad, either the flash will work somewhat good or you can just uninstall it without any harm done). Keep in mind that Adobe AIR hasn't matured yet and will work better in the future. SWF to APK converter Start by giving the ID of the SWF file that you wish to convert to an APK file: Remember that ActionScript 2 does not function, only ActionScript 3. If the file uses AS2 it will be limited to animation only. Click here to see recently created APK files Update 6dec2018: Adobe has removed the AIR runtime from Google Play. Here's a copy to download. Or you can grab it from Adobe's archive, maybe there's a newer version? <--Gone. The version on swfchan is: Adobe AIR 25.0.0.134 Android (ARM) (21.6 MB) Original file name was "AdobeAIRAndroid.apk" but I renamed it to just "air.apk". Where can I find the ID of a SWF file? The ID is the flash's number on the site, it's in the URL of the flash and written below the flash's screenshot on the listings. Here's flash with ID 1 for example. I have a SWF that's not on the site, can I convert it to an APK? You have to add it to swfchan first, go to boards.swfchan.net and upload the SWF on one of the four flash boards. After a while it will appear on the dot com front page and you can then use its ID to convert it into an APK file for your phone. You can use the search field at the top and search on your flash's file name if you think you've missed it on the front page. Tip: If you can't find the flash by its name on the site you can try doing a byte search. Right-click the flash file on your computer and select properties. Find the size field and select the number of bytes (don't also select the word "bytes"). Copy the number into the search field and press enter (you don't have to remove any spaces in the number). After the APK is created how do I get it on my phone? A one-time thing you need to do on your phone is go to Settings > Applications and tick the box that says "Unknown sources - Allow installation of non-Market applications". Now all you have to do is open your phone's browser and enter the URL that leads to the APK file here on swfchan. After you have downloaded the file, open it and your phone will ask you if you wish to install. Another way of doing it is downloading the APK file to your computer and use adb.exe (part of Android's Development Toolkit) to install the app, but why make it harder? How do I put a movie clip on my phone? If you have downloaded a FLA file from YouTube or wherever you first need to embed it into a SWF file. Then you upload that SWF file to boards.swfchan.net as normal and wait until it has been added to the archive by the swfchan bot. Now you can type its ID into the field above. How long do the APK file remain up on swfchan? At the moment the created APK files are not automatically deleted from the server due to the low amount of activity, however they will be proned eventually so do not consider the URL leading to the APK files to be permanent (they might be gone tomorrow). Can you make a similar service for the iPhone? If Apple makes its platform a little less restricted in the future this might be possible. Why does it take so long to open this specific flash? Most of the time it takes probably comes from putting into memory and your phone is doing as well as it can. What are the controls? Use the buttons on your phone to open up the controls. This is what you can do: + Seek in the movie Press BACK once to show/hide the seekbar. When shown you can slide your finger across the screen to seek to different positions on the main time line of the SWF file. + Pause the movie Press BACK twice to pause/unpause. If the seekbar is showing you can just tap anywhere on the screen. + Jump forward in the movie Press BACK three or more times to jump 5 seconds forward for each additional press. + Exit the app Press HOME or press and hold BACK for 1 second. + Change volume Just use the volume buttons on your phone, this is a built-in feature in AIR and nothing I have tinkered with (lowers/increases the "media volume" on your phone). Note that if no sounds are playing in the SWF you will likely change your phone's ringer volume instead. * = Android devices typically no longer provide a MENU button so unfortunately the next five things probably won't work unless you have such a device (with both BACK and MENU buttons). *+ Zoom, rotate or drag the movie Press MENU. A round symbol appears in the upper left corner. You can now use normal zoom/rotate gestures with your fingers to apply those on the movie. You can reposition the movie using your finger. Tap quickly four times to reset the position to default. *+ Stop all sounds Press and hold MENU for half a second. Not to be confused with muting all sounds, when you stop all sounds you halt all streams of audio currently playing in the SWF file (use this to silence annoying music overlaps etc). You can probably get back the desired audio again by pausing and unpausing (if it is streaming audio). *+ Remove the mask By default everything outside the flash's visual bounds are hidden by a mask, you can remove it by pressing MENU four times. *+ Framestepping Press MENU once so that the round symbol appears in the top corner. Now press BACK to step forward one frame (you might want to pause before doing this). Press BACK several times to leap forward several frames at the same time. *+ Open the phone's soft keyboard Quickly disable/enable the mask (or vice versa). In other words press MENU a bunch of times until the keyboard appears. How come there are lots of frames at the end of the seekbar I can't seek to? If the flash is an embedded FLV movie (I'm guessing it is) those frames aren't real frames, someone has used a program that has set the frame count in the SWF header to more than the actual frames in the flash. Why do text sometimes look (very) odd? I'm not sure, I guess AIR has some issues not solved yet. You can try to zoom in/out a little bit, the text problem will come and go at different zoom levels. Got any tip to reduce lag? Zoom to make the thing you're viewing smaller. The smaller area that has to be drawn each frame the faster it goes, just like when viewing flash files on the computer. Can't I just use my browser to play flash on my Android phone? Yes but then you have to be online and there are some performance lost from having to run the SWF through your browser. By having the SWF as an app you'll always have it easily accessible next to your other apps. Does this work great? It works well enough. It's a pity that ActionScript 2 can't be supported though. This SWF uses AS3 and won't load at all, what gives? If the word "loading" changes to "failed" it means that the SWF uses features that aren't supported on mobile devices, like for example custom context menus on right-click. SWF files that are using unsupported classes during construction can't be loaded because they crash. Check this table with capabilities of different profiles for more info on what isn't supported on phones, look in the mobileDevice column. If you are making a SWF yourself that you want working on a phone be sure to always use try-catch Error handling around the incompatible classes and make sure your flash works properly without them (don't depend on the ContextMenu for navigation for example). Then the SWF will work as an APK app on phones. Torrent creation and seeding (file hosting) You can upload a WinRAR archive on boards.swfchan.net/res.shtml and the system will automatically create a BitTorrent file that people can use to download the RAR. The resulting torrent file will be seeded by the swfchan server, meaning that you do not yourself have to seed it. It will remain seeded for as long as the file is up on the /res/ board. If you want to you can help seeding but you don't have to. The uploaded RAR can also be downloaded directly from the thread without the use of a BitTorrent client. If the RAR archive contains images 16 thumbnails will be created of the images inside the archive. These are merged together into one image (a "thumbnail chart"). A index text file is created from the uploaded RAR archive, describing filenames, paths and sizes. The magnet link of the torrent file will be available as soon as the torrent is created. This allows you to share the torrent without actually using the generated torrent file. The created torrent file is trackerless, meaning that it does not depend on a central point and will keep on existing as long as someone is seeding. Important! The uploaded RAR archive must follow a couple of rules to be accepted by the system, these can be read in the boards.swfchan.net FAQ. I shut down the torrent support 30mar2016. After about five years of nobody using it. It just took server resources away from the rest of the site. Mirroring of 4chan images The problem with linking images you find on 4chan to your friends is that they can 404 quickly. But by changing the domain to "4chanlink.org" in the URL you can keep the image online much, much longer. Example URL Actual image location: http://i.4cdn.org/b/src/1305489361877.jpg Link to give to your friends:   http://i.4chanlink.org/b/src/1305489361877.jpg For obvious reasons I put this service on a different domain: 4chanlink.org Visit the 4chanlink URL once yourself before sending it to anyone, or else the server won't know that it should mirror that image. If the domain automatically changes from 4chanlink.org to 4cdn.org it means that the image was mirrored successfully. Check the site for more info on how it works. Note: 4chanlink was taken out of commision 29apr2015 because it was being used very rarely the way I intended it to be used and very often the way I didn't want it to be used. Creation of flash loops Make your own SWF loop, all you need is an audio file and at least one image file. Start by going to thread A and upload the MP3 or WAV that you want for audio in your loop, plus any GIF/JPG/PNG images you'd like to use for visuals. You can RAR all your desired images into one archive and upload them that way. Please RAR your image files if you plan to use more than three. The audio file must always be uploaded separately. You can use any file on the boards.swfchan.net domain. You don't have to have upload them yourself to use them in your own loop. A lot of cut out music loops can be found in thread B. IMPORTANT! If you have made a custom looping cut from a longer music track you should upload it to thread B instead of thread A! Only if you're uploading a whole track should you use thread A (or if your audio is not music). After your files has been uploaded, right-click on their links and select copy shortcut. These URLs are the ones you should use in the forms during the resource gathering portion of the loop creation process. Note that a getfile.asp URL for big files are OK. To begin, give the URL leading to the audio you wish to use in your loop. Click here to see recently created flash loops Mirror File Server This service isn't a service like the other ones on this page, it's actually more like a service that you can provide for swfchan for the good of the community. By hosting a small client on your computer you can help out and mirror flash files. People will be able to download files from you instead of from the swfchan server, in return the swfchan server uploads the most popular files directly to your computer. If you don't want to help out by providing a mirror for the site this might still be of use to you. You can use the client as a personal file server. To do this simply tell the client not to communicate with swfchan in the ini file. It can provide a simple way of accessing your files from other computers when you are not at home (non-flash files are also supported). From 19nov2012 the only purpose of the client is to work as a private file server. It has some unique features that you might find useful. Go ahead and use it however you wish. This project has its own sub domain. Not any more. Please go there if you want to download the client or if you want to know more. Insight Not that much of a 'service' exactly but I put it here anyway. You can get some insight on how people are finding swfchan by checking out the referrers. A lot of insight can be gained through the stats (site activity for example). You can also check out the what's popular-page to get some insight on trending flashes. GifShooter A program that lets you record flashes as you view them on swfchan and then make animated gif images. More info and download on this page. imgtxt A simple way of putting text into images, just run this flash file online/offline. I created this mainly for people wanting to quickly translate manga for people in forums, but it can be used to create super funny meme pics too if you want to. Comic Sans MS is of course included! The latest version of imgtxt is here: http://swfchan.com/imgtxt/ To download the flash file you can pull down the top frame to reveal a download link. Otherwise you can click here to go to the top frame of the frameset. I would love to hear about any usage of imgtxt, don't hesitate to post in the discussion thread. If you want a feature, please suggest. FLV Maker Create high quality Flash Video (.flv) files using On2's VP6 codec! FLVs created are ready to be embedded into your .swf files in no time. More info and download on this page. SwfH264 Embed a FLV of much higher quality into flash using SwfH264. This (almost) diminishes the need for FLV Maker completely since On2VP6 can't compete with the quality of H.264. "Almost" because if you need a FLV that you can embed into a MovieClip (meaning the video is only part of your swf with vectors on top or you want to have multiple videos with buttons) you may still need On2VP6. ImageToVectorToFlash Convert an image to vector graphics that can be imported into flash (or used elsewhere). Visit the project page. The Swiff Army Knife The one program to rule them all. Well, that's the plan anyway. Right now it doesn't offer all the things that the other programs do but one day it will (hopefully). Got a comment? Post it in the service discussion.