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Re: [Swftools-common] some problems with swftools
From: |
Brian C |
Subject: |
Re: [Swftools-common] some problems with swftools |
Date: |
Sun, 09 May 2004 09:13:15 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (X11/20040306) |
John Taber wrote:
I think there is a real opportunity for Swftools to work with OO/Impress
since Impress does not export sounds, avi's , or even any actions in swf and
Impress is a good frontend to creating a series of slides/frames. But at the
moment the swftools seem difficult to use - maybe some real-life examples
would enable many people to use this combination.
I'd be happy to write up some sample if I can get them to work.
I agree. Here's what I did just yesterday after discovering swftools.
Scenario: You have audio recorded of a speaker's presentation (as a
single .wav) and you have the .ppt slides they used (also as a single
file.)
Goal: You'd like to combine the audio and slides for web-viewing, using
Linux/Unix.
Solution: OO.org's Impress + swftools.
1. Use OO.org Impress to export SLIDES.ppt to SLIDES.swf
2. wav2swf -o AUDIO.swf SPEAKERSTALK.wav (which makes the .wav a .swf)
3. swfcombine -T -o OUTPUT.swf SLIDES.swf AUDIO.swf (combines the .swfs)
4. Put OUTPUT.swf on the web. --You did it!
Current Problems:
1. To compile swftools on Debian I had to ask on this list and learn
that my older gcc requires:
> LDFLAGS=-lstdc++ ./configure
> make
> make install
That should be on the website somewhere.
2. The resulting OUTPUT.swf has no back button and so if the user clicks
too far ahead, they have to scroll through all the slides to get back to
the right place. There is probably a way to fix this, but I don't know
how to do it using just free software tools.
3. Similarly, the audio is not timed to the presentation. The user has
to guess when to click on the slide to advance it. Matthias suggested a
possible fix for this yesterday, but it seemed to depend upon splitting
up the audio into multiple files, one file for each slide. That sounds
like a lot of work. Is there instead a way to take the output from
Impress, SLIDES.swf, and make it into a new .swf that "knows" when to
advance each slide because I tell it the appropriate time intervals?
Again, using free software tools?
4. The .swf file I made yesterday was for a ~45 minute talk and so the
resulting file was over 10MB. When loading the file there is no
"Loading... Please wait" indicator, the first slide simply appears, and
so some users may not realize what's happening and give up before it
finishes loading.
Nonetheless, I'm thrilled to have discovered swftools and to already be
making good use of it!
Brian
P.S. If you care to see the file I made it is linked to from here:
http://boalt.org/speakers.html
Click the link that says:
"Listen to the talk and see the slides in this Flash movie"