New Flash Utilities

Here are the latest Flash utilities to hit the market. First, Wildform has a new "Lite" version of it's popular SWF development tool. WildPresenter Lite is a stripped down version of their rapid SWF development tool called WildPresenter Pro. The "Pro" version will continue to offer the ability to convert PowerPoint files to SWF and create original Flash content from scratch. The "Lite" version will be capable of producing SWF content only. It will be interesting to see if Wildform eventually develops a separate PowerPoint to SWF converter for the corporate communication market. There are many PowerPoint users who don't want (or need) the authoring features that WildPresenter Pro or Lite offers. They just want to convert their PPT files.

On the Flash to Video front, Sothink has just launched a Flash to Video converter. This new product aptly named "SWF to Video Converter" lets you select a capture area inside a Flash file and export the results to several video file formats (including an iPod compatible format). One other useful feature is the ability to add a "watermark" to the video output. I plan to test this utility and report back on the video quality. Needless to say that this product could be quite useful to DSN operators, providing a new way of repurposing multimedia content for their screens.