Is there a way to convert SWF animations to movie files on Linux?

Question

Is there any Linux tool that will take a SWF file and output some kind of video format? Note that I don't want a tool which will re-encode an embedded FLV or MP4, I want to take a standard Flash movie and render it as a video.

I found a reference to dump-gnash in the GNU Manual, but having installed the gnash package on Fedora I don't have that command.

Solution

While not the best option, you could try compiling gnash yourself and passing the --enable-gui=dump flag.

To do this, I downloaded the latest gnash from http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gnash/0.8.10/

1. Extract with tar -xf gnash-0.8.10.tar.gz

2. Change into the extracted directory cd gnash-0.8.10

3. Run ./configure --enable-gui=dump

4. Run make

But to do this, you will need basic development tools (GCC, GNU Make) and some libraries like FFMPEG, boost and agg (but you can install these from your distribution, no need to compile yourself, otherwise you would be compiling for a while). I may have left a few libraries out, but ./configure should tell you if you are missing something.

You can then run ./gui/dump-gnash [options] movie_file.swf.

Comments

[Dejan]

Did you find a solution? Have you seen ConvertSWF? untested but you need dump-gnash.

[Tougamer]

Unfortunately I just end up with a seven minute long movie of complete blackness :( BTW, the Fedora equivalent command is vnc2swf-edit

[WWPTV]

Sorry to hear, guess it's Debian only? Works on Ubuntu 10.04.

[Tougamer]

I got it installed fine, it just didn't work.

[Tougamer]

I never at any point had the original .fla. Nor do I have a version of Flash which works on Linux.