1 1.) What's the price of swftools?
3 SWFTools is free of charge (donations are welcome, though), and is
4 released under the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).
6 2.) Where can I donate?
8 You can donate via PayPal by clicking on the "donate" button
9 on http://www.swftools.org/donate.html
12 3.) How to compile/link swftools on Unix/Linux/BSD?
14 Download swftools-0.x.x.tar.gz. Then type, on the
17 tar -zvxf swftools-0.x.x.tar
23 (you will have to be root for the last step)
25 4.) What libraries do I need to compile swftools on Unix/Linux/BSD?
27 You need freetype and jpeglib to compile pdf2swf.
30 http://www.freetype.org
32 http://www.ijg.org/files/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
34 5.) when compiling the sourcecode version, configure doesn't find my jpeglib!
36 In case some of your libraries/include files are installed in /usr/local,
40 LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include" ./configure
42 Furthermore, a new installation of jpeglib (the following assumes it's in
43 /usr/local/lib) often requires doing a
45 ranlib /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.a
46 ldconfig /usr/local/lib
48 In order to install jpeglib, it's furthermore been remarked that you need
54 If it still doesn't work, try removing the file "config.cache"
55 before running configure again.
57 6.) There are problems during compilation:
58 Error messages complain about "undefined reference to `operator new(unsigned)'"
59 as well as "undefined reference to `__gxx_personality_v0'".
61 Try running configure as
63 LDFLAGS=-lstdc++ ./configure
65 7.) How do I compile swftools on Mac OS X?
67 You need to get fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net), and install it.
68 After this, you need to install all the required libs (jpeg, freetype, lame):
70 fink install libjpeg libjpeg-shlibs freetype2 freetype2-shlibs lame lame-shlibs
72 Then, you have to inform configure of where they are:
74 LDFLAGS="-L/sw/lib" CPPFLAGS="-I/sw/include -I/sw/include/lame" ./configure
78 If this doesn't work, especially if you want to use the python library and
79 get weird exceptions, try to remove all versions of jpeglib, freetype and
80 lame from /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib, and then run configure / make / make install
83 If you also want to use the python interface, you may have to copy the
84 Imaging headers (Imaging.h, ImPlatform.h, ImConfig.h) to
85 /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/include/python2.3/
86 before running configure.
88 8.) Is there a pdf2swf/avi2swf for Windows?
90 Windows versions of all SWF utilities are downloadable from
91 http://www.quiss.org/swftools/download.html
93 (There's a self-extracting .exe version of all versions since 0.6.1,
94 and a .zip or .rar archive of the newest development snapshot)
96 9.) Where's the source code of the Windows version?
98 It's the same as the Unix source code. If you want to compile
99 under Windows, it's recommended that you get the CVS version
101 You need MingW (http://www.mingw.org) to compile it.
102 When cross-compiling under Linux, e.g. the following generates the Windows .exe files:
104 CXX=i386-mingw32msvc-g++ CPP=i386-mingw32msvc-cpp CC=i386-mingw32msvc-gcc \
105 ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc && make
107 For compiling on Windows itself, there's a HOWTO from Daichi Shinozaki:
108 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/swftools-common/2005-02/msg00023.html
110 10.) The fonts in the SWFs generated by pdf2swf are wrong!
112 Watch the output of pdf2swf closely.
113 You should see something like:
115 WARNING Font Myriad-Roman could not be loaded.
116 WARNING Try putting a TTF version of that font (named "Myriad-Roman.ttf") into /swftools/fonts
118 Provided you actually own the font in question (here: Myriad-Roman.ttf),
119 you can copy that fonts into your current directory and pass
120 the "-F ./" (--fontpath ./) option to pdf2swf.
121 If you use a font in several PDFs, you can also simply copy it
122 to (on Windows) C:\SWFTools\Fonts\, or (on Unix) /usr/local/share/swftools/fonts
123 to make it work all the time.
125 11.) Can png2swf handle transparency?
127 Yes. It supports PNG mode 2 transparency (256 color palettes with alpha) since version 0.4.2.
128 Mode 6 (32 bit RGBA truecolor) is also supported since version 0.4.4.
130 12.) How to do Flash MX compression with SWFTools?
132 Most tools support the -z flag for outputting compressed SWF.
133 Furthermore you can compress/uncompress SWF files using swfcombine:
135 swfcombine -dz file.swf -o file_new.swf
139 swfcombine -d file.swf -o file_new.swf
143 13.) avi2swf converts my avi files upside down!
145 Try using the -p (--flip) switch.
147 14.) How to extract images/sounds from myfile.swf using swfextract?
149 First list all extractable items:
151 swfextract myfile.swf
153 The result is something like:
155 Objects in file myfile.swf:
156 [-i] 3 Shapes: ID(s) 1-3
157 [-i] 5 MovieClips: ID(s) 4, 5, 8, 10, 12
158 [-j] 3 JPEGs: ID(s) 69, 116, 447
159 [-p] 1 PNG: ID(s) 318
160 [-s] 3 Sounds: ID(s) 28-30
161 [-f] 10 Frames: ID(s) 0-10
163 Now you can extract a shape using
165 swfextract -i 2 myfile.swf -o shape.swf
169 swfextract -s 28 myfile.swf -o sound.wav
171 a PNG image file using
173 swfextract -p 318 myfile.swf -o file.png
177 15.) Is there a mailing list for SWFTools?
179 Yes there is. You can subscribe by going to
181 http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/swftools-common
183 16.) Why didn't Matthias answer my swftools-related mail?
185 Currently, Matthias is getting much more mails than he can answer. It's frustrating,
187 He tries his best to at least *read* all mails he receives.
188 If you need an answer to something, it's usually more effective to post it on the
189 mailing list, though, as there are a lot of friendly users around there which may
190 have the one or other helpful tip concerning your problem.
192 16.) When will feature/bugfix/enhancement XY be implemented?
194 Setting deadlines in a non-commercial, spare-time project like swftools tools is hard,
195 and keeping them is even harder, if not impossible.
197 Therefore, do not ask about deadlines, and you won't get fuzzy, or even wrong, answers.
199 17.) How to compile avi2swf?
201 avi2swf isn't part of the swftools distribution anymore. If you want to convert avi files
202 to swf, please use either mencoder or ffmpeg:
204 mencoder file.avi -lavfopts i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames \
205 -ffourcc FLV1 -oac mp3lame -of lavf -ovc lavc \
206 -lavcopts vcodec=flv:acodec=mp3:vbitrate=500:abitrate=56 -srate 22050 \
211 ffmpeg -i video.mpg -b <bitrate> -s <X>y<Y> -pass 1 -passlogfile log_file video.flv
212 ffmpeg -i video.mpg -b <bitrate> -s <X>y<Y> -pass 2 -passlogfile log_file video.flv
213 flvtool2 -UP video.flv
215 18.) How can I create transparent SWFs from PDFs?
217 Run pdf2swf as usual, and then, on the resulting file, execute:
219 swfextract -i 3- file.swf -o file.swf
221 19.) How can I convert SWF frames to bitmap?
223 There's a "swfrender" utility in the CVS, which isn't finished yet,
224 and will only work for *very* simple SWF files. (No Actionscript, no
225 gradient fills, no morph shapes, no blending modes, no filters, etc.)
226 Probably other Flash Open-Source projects (like Gnash) have some
227 more sophisticated utilities for this. (One user reported that
228 swfdec (http://swfdec.freedesktop.org/wiki/) and pyswfdec
229 (http://www.gnome.org/~gianmt) work good)
230 If you find other tools that work, I'd like to know about it.
231 Please mail me at kramm@quiss.org.