hi!
how can I publish my Blender-Animations on a website? I think the easiest way is to convert the rendered AVI´s to SWF-files (Flash) - but I can´t find any tool which can convert avi to swf!
If you know one could you just post a link? I prefer posts for freeware-tools… 
thanx a lot!
WHY!?
well, anyway
swf can contain an avi file, but still it will not be any better than just publishing the avi
also, trying to make a swf that doesn’t contain an avi [so a real vector graphics animation] would be a real pain, it isn’t a good idea to convert bitmaps to vectors.
So, what you should do is find a good divx or xvid or other mpeg 4 encoder to play with, then merely put that on your website
[or, if you want to annoy everyone not on windows you could download the free windows media player 9 or 10 encoder]
Actually, Flash MX 2004 Pro has video compression built-in (whereas the normal version doesn’t). It’s pretty slick, but it will cost you.
SWF video files can be compressed very well, and it’s a lot more portable than for example avi files. With avi’s someone will always say “The codec doesn’t work!”. But I think you’ll need the official Flash tools for SWF videos.
So here is a opensource program that can compress your videofiles for you:
http://www.virtualdub.org/
Just download codecs like DivX, let VirtualDub import a series of images or raw avi files, and then compress it with the codec of your choice!
Wax freeware video editor. Sorry, Windows based. It can even import md2, 3ds and ms3d files…suposedly to compose a 2d renderd movie, of course.
It has a a lot of video editing features. But I myself haven’t installed, as I am mostly all about realtime 3d.
It can import avi, and export SWF. Same guy has made a tut maker with swf export. Also freeware, and a 2d morphing tool.
here:
www.debugmode.com
@z3r0 d: Like Egg said it´s an portability-thing why i want my animations in SWF an not in AVI. In my expierience users have much more trouble with playing embedded videos than flash-movies. But sure it could be a problem to convert bitmaps -> vectors.
@Egg: Can I add special effects in VirtualDub? I heared a lot about VirtualDub but I can´t imagine what I can do with it - is it like an opensource After Effects?
@Extrudeface: Yea, that looks cool - I just made a download and I will try this tool soon!!
Hey Extrudeface thanks for that link man! Exactly what I´ve searched for!
good it helped you 
Virtual dub can make also filters effects. Some are included, and there’s an apart page for user made filters.
Zweinstein video editor is another windows based video editor freeware. If I were into video editing, I’d download and use the 3 of them…because you allways find an effect that is not in the other and in the other way too. Anyway, the 3 of them are free, so…
Wax seems to be a very nice do-it-all…Zweinstein seem to have some rare video effects… Virtual Dub imho is very good for serious stuff. i have used only this one.
Then there’s also Cinelerra, for Linux, very professional one. And Cinepaint for several OSes. haven’t tried any of these, either.
And don’t forget…you can allways …for example, export/import individual frames with Wax, or with Virtual dub, and edit individually the tga sequences in Gimp, if you really , really need a very custom effect.
Avi uncompressed is a comfortable way to port loss-less per-frame editing video from one program to another (ie: you can render in blender or any 3d package as avi uncompressed, open in a vdieo editor, extract some frames, edit them in gimp, reimport in video editor, etc…)
It’d be good to think of Audacity at sourceforge.net if need some audio editing help, also.
Virtualdub can’t do effects. Like Extrudeface said, there are some filters available, which can do things like contrast-brightness adjustments and subtitling. But Virtualdub could be seen better as a verrrry basic Premiere than After Effects.
As some have said, using swf can hugely compress file size without too bad a loss in quality. My buds and I are pushing the envelope on compression versus acceptable loss of quality for a website we’re making that utilizes 3d animations exported to avi then imported into the swf/flash site. We got a high res, 23 meg, 11 second clip down to 90k. Granted our standards for loss of quality allow quite a bit of pixelation, simply because of the volume of avis we’re bringing into the site, but it still looks pretty damned good, so if you dont mind larger file sizes and load times, you can get some darn good compression doing it that way.
edit what I mean is, larger than 90k…youd still get much smaller file sizes than with avi’s.
one nice advanatage of SWFs is… -I think- no codec problem, you can open it with IE or Mozilla Firefox 1.0…
I want to advice to You one tool for such convertions. It’s Video to Flash Converter. From all I tried this soft showed to me really good quality.
http://www.geovid.com/Video_to_Flash_Converter/
theres a program called Riva FLV Encoder ive forgotton the link but just search for it in google
FLV format is the video format in Flash.
NOTE! this is only video not sound.
Hey - Here’s an idea that people are going to throw heavy objects at me for…
Why not have a flash export script?
Think about it… Flash and Blender are both co-ordinate based. You can work out the relative 2 Dimensional co-ords from the current viewpoint.
You could even export animation, but I think converting textures and lighting would be a pain. Perhaps just the colour attribites from an object’s material.
Hmmm - Must be close to time to learn Python!!!
Oh mighty Son of Poultry… I am not worthy.
(But hey - Cool!)