— A small program written in Java that makes it easy to embed a H.264/AAC video into a swf file. Only downside is that the flash must be fully downloaded before playback.

DOWNLOAD

SwfH264_v1.1.0.rar (25.4 MiB) — Extracts to 45.6 MiB.

Designed to run on Windows but you can probably use it to make a swf with an embedded flv on all platforms. Requires Java 7 or higher.

If the program doesn't start, right-click "! Run SwfH264.bat" and select Edit to open it in Notepad.
Then replace "javaw" with the complete path to javaw.exe on your machine so the line reads like this:
start "SwfH264" "C:\<your path to java here>\jre<version>\bin\javaw.exe" -Xmx5000m -jar programJar

You can also try changing -Xmx5000m to something lower, like -Xmx1000m, or removing it completely.

DEMONSTRATION

Foxy Lady.swf (4 MiB)

You can see the source bar below the visuals if you resize your browser window to be thin and tall. Note: The source bar was updated in v1.1.0 -- it is no longer so far below the visuals and has a bigger font with darker colors. In the archive: #171005

EXAMPLE

This is how "Foxy Lady.swf" was created:

	Program started.
	FLV selected.
	Pressed "-- SUBS --" and added some subtitles. For this example I inserted the subs directly inside the program but it is recommended that you instead create a .srt file in a proper subtitle tool and then import it into SwfH264. It's not only more comfortable and less guesswork with the times but that way you can also save your subs and continue later.
	Closed the subtitles window and filled in some information. You should always give source of the video in the flash!
	This appears shortly after pressing the "Go!" button. Press save to actually write the flash to disk.

MAKING THE FLV

UPDATE: You can now use The Swiff Army Knife to make the FLV file.

I recommend you use The Swiff Army Knife because it has more refined options for ffmpeg (and you don't have to work with the command line yourself).

I plan to eventually have The Swiff Army Knife replace SwfH264 completely.

The whole point of this program is to embed a H.264 FLV into the flash so you shouldn't use the FLV Maker. Instead we'll use ffmpeg.exe to encode the video (the program is included when you download SwfH264).

A "flv.bat" file exists, right-click it and select Edit to open it in Notepad. This should be modified to create the FLV that you desire. When making "Foxy Lady.swf" I kept the default settings and only changed -vb 1250k to increase the video's bitrate, -r 20.0 to make the video 20 fps and scale=-1:ih*0.50 to halve the dimensions.

There's a tab called "Tips for creating FLV" inside the program. You can read its content in the textarea below (the command lines of "flv.bat" is also there).

Future versions of SwfH264 might allow you to create the required FLV file from inside the program but at the moment you have to make it yourself. Here are however some tips on how to do it using ffmpeg.exe. This program should have been included with SwfH264 when you downloaded it. A pre-made file named "flv.bat" should exist that contains the line of code displayed below. You can right-click it and select "Edit" to open it in Notepad. ####################### ffmpeg.exe -i "input.mp4" -vb 555k -ss 00:00:00.000 -t 99:00:00.000 -r 18.0 -vf crop=iw-0000*2:ih-0000*2,scale=-1:ih*1.00 -keyint_min 9 -g 180 -vcodec libx264 -sn -acodec libvo_aacenc -ac 2 -ar 44100 -ab 64k -cutoff 18000 -f flv -y "output.flv" ####################### When run what happens is that ffmpeg re-encodes your input with a H.264 video codec and an AAC audio codec and then puts it into a FLV container. The result ("output.flv") is what you should load into SwfH264 (the metadata of the FLV will be set up automatically upon import). -vb 555k Lowering or increasing the video bitrate is your main quality vs file size controller. Try out your desired settings and see where you land, repeat with a different -vb until you are satisfied. After you've found your target file size by changing -vb you can begin to sacrifice other settings if need be (less resolution, lower framerate, cropping) to make the most out of the available bitrate and have your FLV looking as good as possible. -ss 00:00:00.000 Determines where the video should start (use it to cut away those long intros). -t 99:00:00.000 Determines how long your video will be (use it to cut away credits or other pointless video endings that only take up space). Keep in mind that this time is counted FROM the start time set by -ss (EndTime-StartTime = -t). -r 18.0 The output video will have as close to this framerate as possible. 24.0 fps looks better but 18.0 fps saves space and isn't that noticeable of a compromise if the file size is important. Remove "-r 18.0" completely to try and encode with the same frame rate as the original video. Always do so if the input video has less frame rate than whatever is set by -r. Sometimes ffmpeg will fail due to incompatible framerate, then just add/subtract something like 0.5 to the number and try again. crop=iw-0000*2:ih-0000*2 Erases pixels from both left/right or both top/bottom. Use this to remove black borders from the video. "ih-0100*2" will for example remove 100 pixels from both the top and bottom part of the video. If you want to only erase pixels from one direction, or erase different amounts at left/right or top/bottom you need to replace "crop=iw-0000*2:ih-0000*2" with "crop=iw-RIGHT-LEFT:ih-TOP-BOTTOM:LEFT:TOP" (the following example will crop 20px from the top and 40px from the bottom: "crop=iw-0-0:ih-20-40:0:20"). scale=-1:ih*1.00 Resizes the video (after any cropping). "0.50" will halve the dimensions (-1 preserves the aspect ratio, replace it with "iw*1.00" to enable stretching). Sometimes ffmpeg will fail due to incompatible size, then just add/subtract something like 0.001 to the number and try again. You can also resize to an exact size, like so: "scale=640:360" -keyint_min 9 -g 180 These two controls the minimum and maximum distance between key frames in your video. Many keyframes increases visual quality and improves seeking but creates a larger file. Beware of lowering -g too much since it will reduce the quality a lot. This is because it prevents ffmpeg from looking far ahead in the video while rendering. Increase -keyint_min to have less keyframes in your output video. -ab 64k The audio bitrate isn't that important. Since your video will have AAC audio it will get much better quality at lower bitrates than you would have gotten with MP3. Usually it's better to be able to spend those bytes on the video but if it's in the file size budget go ahead and use "-ab 128k". At lower bitrates, say 32k, it might be a good idea to lower the sampling frequency to "-ar 22050" or even "-ar 11025" at 16k. If your video's audio has mostly speech you can lower the frequency at much higher bitrates than that and still have it sound good. Common bitrates: 8k 16k 18k 20k 24k 32k 40k 48k 56k 64k 80k 96k 112k 128k 160k 192k 256k 320k

CONTROLS

A/D or left/right:	Seek to previous/next key frame.
W/S or up/down:	Increase/decrease volume.
Space:	Pause/unpause.
Backspace:	Rewind.
ENTER:	Show/hide subtitles.
M:	Toggle mute.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS

+ Seamless looping
Right now there is a, usually, small delay when the video repeats. If that little gap was removed the program could be used to create proper swf loops with perfectly synced audio.

+ Audio insertion
If the video can loop seamlessly it would be possible to create proper swf loops with a seperate audio track that isn't synced with the visuals.

+ Better memory management in the resulting SWF file
Right now things are a little sloppy but it works.

+ Streaming video
Currently you have to download the whole video before you can start watching it in the flash. I suspect there is a way around this, possibly by putting lossless images into the main timeline that are filled with bytes from the video. Then as the flash is downloaded these small chunks of the video is extracted from the fake images and gets added to the video stream.

+ Fixed font letter size
Sometimes certain letters in the subtitles become smaller or larger than the rest, depending on the dimensions of the flash. They recover at certain dimensions of the flash but it would be nice if this issue can be resolved.

+ Video Editor
Being able to cut out/put together parts of a video or balance the audio volume.

+ Video Converter
Being able to create that final FLV file from inside the program.

+ Compressed video bytes
As long as they can be decompressed in ActionScript 3 it would be possible to add another layer of compression to the video, if it would reduce the file size even further.

+ Save project
Closing the program to continue later.

+ Export subtitles
Since the program can import a .srt file it might as well be able to export one too.

+ Seekbar
Having a clickable seekbar to be able to jump in the video using your mouse instead of the keyboard.

+ Chapters
Menu of named chapters which takes you to a certain point in the video. Could be used to export several episodes as one combined video and then presenting the available choices of episodes to the viewer. If there's a seekbar the chapters could be red vertical lines that display their name when hovered.

+ Quick jump
Pressing 1234567890 to seek to a certain percentage of the video's duration.

+ More pleasant subtitle creation
Better GUI for inserting subtitles. Maybe even a "timer button" which allows you to watch the video and then press the button to start/end subtitles.

+ Different preloaders
Maybe have a selection of different preloaders to chose from? Could change in type as well as just color.

+ FFmpeg stream selection
Some videos have different audio/video streams. Might be good to mention how to grab the one(s) that you want for your FLV.

+ Subtitle searching
To be able to do a quick CTRL+F kind of search in the added subtitles.

+ Subtitle undo
To be able to CTRL+Z in the subtitle text areas.

+ Extract subtitle
How to extract a .srt file from a video to be used in SwfH264.

VERSION HISTORY

1.0.0 (5jun2015) r1

1.1.0 (9jun2015) r2

Questions or comments? Want an update?

Please post about SwfH264 in its discussion thread.