15-Minute Reviews :: SWF & FLV Player v3.0.33.5106

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today;s application is SWF & FLV Player version 3.0.33.5106 by Eltima Software – An application to play Flash files.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“With SWF & FLV Player by Eltima Software watching Flash movies becomes fun! First, it plays all .flv, .swf and Projector .exe files without any problem. Second, our player lets you manipulate movie files any way you want: play, rewind, fast-forward and preview SWF and FLV files frame-by-frame. Something in the movie caught your eye? Zoom in feature of SWF & FLV Player will let you easily preview the specific part of the movie.

You can customize the playlists as well! Reoder, repeat shuffle items in the playlist, save and load them, open the last item played everything is delivered for your comfort. Moreover, using SWF & FLV Player you may browse any web address to discover all Flash movies it has, preview and open loaded Flash animations. SWF & FLV Player PRO delivers even more useful features: ability to save currently played flash movie no matter whether it is loaded from, online or locally; switch to full-screen viewing mode; capture SWF frame screenshots, etc.”

Quick Pros

• Interface, while awkward, is functional
• Playlist functionality
• Playback quality good
• Screenshot functionalities work quite nicely

Quick Cons

• Download online Flash feature does not function well
• Does not download outside media well

Expansion

Upon launching the application, I was greeted by a multi-piece video player. The interface is very straightforward but does seem underdeveloped in ways; The player window; Video window and playlist/properties windows don’t dock to each other; You have to dig into the menus for a lot of options such as full screen support (No button for it); As well, you can’t drag and drop folders, only files themselves, even though the Add button has a function for adding an entire directory. That said, once you get your playlist built and other aspects set up, then the interface is pretty simple to use.

The best function of this entire application, in my opinion, is the playlist functionality. If you have a collection of SWF and FLV files, this may make an interesting application; Instead of converting to heftier size video files, with this application you can leave them in the SWF/FLV file formats and still have a media player for it. Playback quality is good as well and runs well, except when running external content (See below).

One of the Pro functions, besides the full-sized playback, is the capability to take screenshots or a series of screenshots from the videos. This would be handy for getting a picture of an object, or displaying a preview of a video on your website. I don’t see a great need for this function, but it is interesting and likely would be used now and then by myself and others.

Finally, the last Pro feature I found listed was the capability to open and save SWF files off the internet. I had great hopes for this function but alas the functionality was actually rather disappointing. This feature really only works with SWF files; You can’t save just a FLV file from a site that may be out-linked from a SWF player or similar. While great for sites that don’t display their Flash in Java pop-ups or use FLV files, this function falls flat for usage on sites such as YouTube and MetaCafe. When I attempted YouTube, all I would get would be 403 Forbidden errors; I couldn’t even download the Flash player. When I attempted on MetaCafe, it allowed me to download the player, but it didn’t go well either. When I would click play, the MetaCafe player would blink up for a short second and turn off. When I closed the application and reopened, then the SWF would work, showing me an ad and also showing a default video (Because the FLV link information that would be relayed to the SWF file is gone because there is no more website wrapper) – Mostly defeats the purpose of playing back externally-linked files because they are not being pointed at the correct location any longer. I tried a few different sites and didn’t have any luck with the Open button working either; Every site I could get a SWF file to show up, I could chose Save and save it, but when I clicked ‘Open’, nothing would happen at all. The menu does state that this functionality is (beta), so lets hope it is expanded significantly. I’m not sure if these may be bugs related to my testing, but does seem to be a bit of an issue.

Final Verdict

Granted the player with playlist functionality works pretty well, the fact that the Download function is the weakest point in this application does make this application less than stellar. For free however, this isn’t a bad title if you already have a collection of SWF and FLV files (You possibly kept one of the previous Giveaways which downloaded right from the browser or otherwise?) and would like a playlist player. I wouldn’t rely on the built-in downloader and instead stick to either a Firefox plugin or find one of the better SWF/FLV downloaders out there. As for paying $19.95 for the Pro version, I would suggest holding off until the downloader matures a bit, unless you really need fullscreeen support or screenshot(s) support. There is a free version of this title which lacks a few of the features but does give you playlist functionality with your SWF/FLV, and I think this is where this application does better.

Posted by BladedThoth on Tuesday, September 25, 2007