Thanks Darren for pointing out the alternate and easier approach. However, I feel "interpret the swf and do a drawing" is a cleaner approach to achieve this. One reason for this is once you take a screenshot you need to massage the image. For example in the links pointed by Martin, there is a screenshot : http://www.semicomplete.com/images/googledotcom.png
Now the screenshot contains the toolbar,addressbar etc. of firefox which one definitely wont like to give to end user if one need to show an alternate to swf object... isnt it? Obviously it can be done through imagemagick, but it would be hard to automate it. Another reason is if swf object is a movie with number of frames in it, extracting each frame and then making a gif would be lot easier then taking a screenshot of all the frames and then making a gif. Apart from this, "interpret and draw" gives much more control over what to do with the data. Though I agree it might prove tedious if adobe decides to alter the format of swf, but then that it would affect wide array of osflash tools as well. Cheers, Ashutosh > But an open source version of such swf to image convertor would be > > quite useful. I am still finding it hard to believe that such a tool > > doesnt exist. > > Not for want of demand! I think the way this should be done is to run > the swf in a browser (or standalone player) and then take a screenshot > (*). > > I know all the parts are there on linux, but I've not the knowledge to > put them altogether. I also don't understand the issues of how to run a > graphical application on a remote server. > > I really hope someone will work it all out, ideally tied up in a simple > open source commandline script that you can just give the URL of the > page or swf to be shot, and the output filename you want to use. > > Darren > > *: This would do what you need, but would also have so many other uses. > E.g. being able to take daily or hourly screenshots of how your site > looks in firefox (either to check against a known good screenshot to > detect breakages, or just for record keeping). E.g. unit testing of > actionscript that does drawing. > By taking screenshots there is no need to understand the swf format, and > any future player upgrades will work identically. > > (If you did want to take the "interpret the swf and do a drawing" road, > then the gnash project would be one place to start.) > >
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