[MEncoder-users] mov to swf, mission impossible?

[Barbara Maren Winkler-Wolff]

Hello to all,

can anyone help?

I thought what I want to do is pretty straightforward. I have a  
Panasonic Lumix camera which can take little videos, and I want to put  
one of those videos of my little newborn son on a website for my  
parents and relatives to see. Oh, and I have a Linux (kubuntu) box  
here, but will reluctantly boot Windows XP SP3 occasionally.

The videos from the camera come in Quicktime (.mov) format, and the  
best way I have found to put video into a web page (I don't want to go  
via YouTube) is to use Shockwave Flash (.swf). It only requires the  
Flash player which I know my relatives have already got.

So... I need to convert .mov tu .swf. It shouldn't be hard. Except I  
have found absolutely no way.

For instance, I can easily convert to .avi with mencoder:

$mencoder -ovc lavc  -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=1 -lavcopts  
vcodec=mjpeg -o myVideo.avi myVideo.mov

at http://www.swftools.org/ they say they've got avi2swf. But unfortunately:
"AVI2SWF  Converts AVI animation files to SWF. ... (Notice: this tool  
is not included anymore in the latest version, as ffmpeg or mencoder  
do a better job nowadays)

They say I can convert avi to swf with mencoder, but that's not true:

http://www.swftools.org/faq.html says:
"mencoder file.avi -lavfopts  
i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames \
-ffourcc FLV1 -oac mp3lame -of lavf -ovc lavc \
-lavcopts vcodec=flv:acodec=mp3:vbitrate=500:abitrate=56 -srate 22050 \
-o file.swf"

... admittedly I don't know what "my video stream does noy use b  
frames" means, the option is of course bogus.

... but this does not create a valid .swf (gnash crashes on the  
created .swf file, and firefox refuses to display it), just a valid  
.flv:

mencoder myVideo.avi -of lavf  -f fourcc FLV1 -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc  
-lavcopts vcodec=flv:acodec=mp3:vbitrate=500:abitrate=56 -srate 22050  
-o myVideo.flv

There is a significant difference between myVideo.swf and myVideo.flv,  
namely, my browser with the Flash plugin will read myVideo.swf, and  
not myVideo.flv. When Firefox (3.0) encounters myVideo.flv in  
something like

<object data="myVideo.flv" type="video/x-flv"  width="640" height="400">
   <param name="src" value="myVideo.flv">
</object>
, it offers me to find the appropriate plugin, but doesn't find it  
("Unknown plugin (video/x-flv)")... that's no good. My partner has a  
plugin that does it, xine, and I should have it , too, at least I have  
installed it, but it doesn't show up, Firefox still can't do it, and  
then, that doesn't help, I don't want to just _view_ the video myself,  
I want to _publish_ it to other people who can't be relied on finding  
a nonexistent plugin.

So now, I have myVideo.mov, I can make myVideo.avi and myVideo.flv.
I need my Video.swf, and that's apparently impossible.

I have tried to build an old version of swftools that would still  
contain avi2swf, but the tarball doesn't build.

I have installed the Perl flv2swf by Chris Dolan from  
http://search.cpan.org/~cdolan/FLV-Info-0.24/bin/flv2swf
, but it fails on the .flv created by mencoder:

$ flv2swf myVideo.flv myVideo.swf
Failed to read FLV file: Unknown video frame type at byte 11686  
(0x2da6) at /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/FLV/VideoTag.pm line 62.

I've spent day on this.

Please, does anyone have a solution? How can I convert a .mov, or  
.avi, or .flv to .swf?