Re: FLASH: .swf to VHS???

[imago]

I am a flash newbee.  I am reading the list but have not had the

time to install flahs and start playing around with it.  Being a

digital video and a 3d animator for video person, lurking on this

thread was of interest.


Hardware conversions are possible if you got the right video card or

the right encoder but the results will never look like regular video

a number of reasons.


colorspace - ntsc has a colorspace of between one and two million

colors at best.  computer colorspaces may be transformed to the

number of colors but the saturation of computer colors allowed is

25% over the satureation that ntsc allows for colors.  Basically the

colors won't be right and many saturated colors will blow away the

look and there will be hotspots unless the original .swf files were

designed for color conversion originally.


Aspect ratio - tv is 4 by 3.  if you computer file isn't, certain

something is lost or there is leterboxing.


Frame rate - simply put tv is 30 fps.  Flash anims are not goint to

be that fast if they are to play on a computer in real time


Frame rate not so simply put is that tv is really 60 frames per

second animation.  Motion looks smooth by a harware trick called

interlace where each of the 30 frames per secind is composed of two

fields that are half the vertical resolution each and combined into

one frame by interlacing.  this is one more optical trick that tv

uses to fool the viewer into seing more than the bandwidth allows.


resolution - it varries from one system to another but 720 or 752 by

480 pixels is the minimum amount of resolution needed to give a good

conversion to ntsc.  without that much information, the resulting

ntsc will not be perfect.  any less you are doing something like

expanding a picture in photoshop.  the software will inerpolate the

best it can but beeter results are gotten when you go down in size

not up in size


There is more to it than I have touched on but suffice to say you

can make video out of computer animation of all kinds but the only

way you can get good tv out of it is to use dedicated software and

hardware.


There are many software packages out there to change computer files

into interlaced frames suitable for conversion into tv on hardware

capable of the bandwidths needed. I use Lightwave 3d from Newtek.


Basically you either have a series of bitmap files that are used as

color textures on a "plate" or the software converts the various

file formats like flash or QT into these bitmaps at run time,

rendering.  the software does all the interpolation needed to

produce the interlaced frame files.  Then, they are supplied to the

hardware which converts them to ntsc any tv monitor or vtr can

accept.


Any other way of transfer has no chance of being clean but may be

acceptable for your intended use.  Many modern video boards do a

good job mimicking some areas of the conversion but they never can

change frame rate or do the interlacing.  Their output many be

interlaced 30 fps video but they are not using those specs on the

actual file, only as  the output specs of their signal to be ntsc

legal.


I hope I have made myself clear because this is a large and

interesting field,


imago



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