Re: [Swftools-common] some problems with swftools

[Brian C]

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"