How to scan through a Flash .swf or .flv file and extract a specified number of frames from it?

Question

I would like to be able to

1. create a folder for the copied video frames
2. access the individual frames frome a .flv video file and/or .swf file
3. save these frames to the auto-created folder

I assume one would need to do this using Action Script 3 to scan through the .swf and .flv files and extract the frames.

Are there gudies on how to do this?

Answer 1

You need to know WHAT frames do you want to extract. For example:

• extract 20 frames in regular interval from the video clip
• extract frames at 15 seconds interval
• extract frames at keyframes (scene changes)

I guess that you don't have to use as3 to extract frames, but can also create the script in some other language. Central piece to frame extraction could be ffmpeg, as described in this article.

Answer 2

If it is as3 solution i would do following - make a loader which loads your fla/flv - add enter frame event listener to it and on each frame draw loader object to buffer, if you ever done any loading and drawing, this will probably take you 10-20 minutes to set up.

This is pretty much the only straigt-forward solution if you're dealing with code-based animations, videos can be handled in different and easier ways i guess.

You will face the challenge of saving the output tho. Flash player can save images on your computer, however only by prompting you to save the file. You will need to use functions available only in Air player if you want to save anything without prompts.