15-Minute Reviews :: SWF Maestro SCR v1.15

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s review is on SWF Maestro SCR version 1.15 by SWFMaestro.com – An application to convert your SWF Flash files into screensavers.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Ever thought your Flash demo would make a great screen saver? Create a colorful screen saver with great visual effects from any SWF project. Make a statement about your company or promote your services with a custom screen saver.

Convert your SWF animation into a screen saver that will look great on any PC!”

Quick Pros

• Not a lot of options to get lost on
• Ability to use a custom SWF for screensaver settings
• Produces a smooth-running and decent-sized screensaver

Quick Cons

• A little hard to navigate
• Won’t work well with Flash files with mouse interaction in it

Expansion

A novel idea for a business, website, Flash artist or otherwise. Have a way to take your SWF Flash animations (Either already-built, one for your business or one specifically with one product in mind) and convert it into a screensaver. The uses could be endless in a business scenario and could help improve product awareness and more.

I found that getting this application rolling (once over the clumsy navigation of settings pages – See below) and flowed along pretty well. There aren’t a lot of settings to get lost on here either; Screensaver informational settings, files to use for the screensaver; Custom file icon; Whether to include the Flash installer in the package; and finally where to deposit the application as well as some output settings. I did find the application was a bit awkward to navigate the setup for the compilation with two separate boxes for settings page links to be in; Could have easily done away with that entirely and just had links on the main page.

One interesting feature that did pop out at me was the ability to include a SWF file that is custom settings file for when you are in the Display -> Screensaver page – You can have the user able to set up the screensaver in there. You could offer screensaver information, or toss a promotion code in there somewhere too. Could be very powerful indeed.

I tried this application on two different Flash files and both worked out great and didn’t bloat significantly. In both cases when I didn’t include the Flash installer (Most people would have Adobe Flash Player anyways) the files grew about 340KB in size; Very respectable footprint. They both ran smoothly full-screen, and does not show ‘bleed-over’ off the side of the screen when the file is designed over the edge of the file (Many animations are designed like this.)

One major note I must add in here; Because this isn’t a keypress-to-stop screensaver (IE:- mouse movement or clicking will disable the screensaver) you can not use a SWF file that has a ‘Start’ window, or for Flash games you might have built. There could have been endless more possibilities if there was a customizable ‘screensaver escape’ setup – For example, the options could have been ‘Exit on mouse or keyboard event/Exit on keyboard event/Exit on specific keypress (Define box)’ – An idea of what could have been done is if, say, a pet store developed a virtual fish tank in Flash that was perpetual and basically a game, and it would come up either with the screensaver or an EXE.

Final Verdict

The application does as as advertised; It converts from SWF to screensaver format; It runs smoothly. It could have used a better interface and had a few more options, but all in all works pretty well. For free, if you do plan on building a screensaver from a Flash animation, this’d be the time to grab it. As for paying $39.95, I can not see a lot of individuals or small websites paying this much; However, it may be a purchase worthwhile for some businesses, so long as they feel they can market a screensaver to market themselves.

Posted by BladedThoth on Sunday, July 08, 2007