Wildform Flix Pro 3

Michael Hurwicz September 26, 2002 Wildform Flix is a robust, flexible, easy-to-use tool that translates massive video files (e.g. AVI, MOV, MPEG) into Web-compatible Flash (SWF or FLV) files. It comes in three versions: Flix Pro 3.0 ($149), Flix Standard Edition 3.0 ($89) and Flix Lite ($29). Flix SE is a new addition to the family, introduced in August 2002. At the same time, Wildform dropped the price on Flix Lite from $49 to $29. Wildform also released a Flix Software Developers Kit (SDK) so developers can add Flix Pro to their applications. The two most important new features in Flix Pro 3.0 (and not in Flix SE) are: Pre-compression editing and cropping of video files Automatic export in any one of several custom players. Figure 1 shows the play controls on a custom player. Figure 1. Play controls in a custom player (Flix Pro 3.0) Flix SE 3.0 allows you to export your video with a few basic play controls, shown in Figure 2. . Figure 2. Play controls in a basic player (Flix SE 3.0) The Lite version lacks some features like and . Batch processing Overlay capability (add a logo, watermark or other graphic to your video output) Play controls (loop continuously, play once and stop, unload SWF when the movie ends, load another SWF when movie ends) Auto-preloader to preload another SWF Win and Mac projectors ( $100 worth of video clips from the Wildform Video Library The ability to produce "vectorized" files I put "vectorized" in quotes above, because SWF is by definition a vector format, so all of Flix Pro's output could be called vectorized. However, what Wildform calls "vectorized" output is: more cartoonish and posterized than Flix Pro's standard SWF output significantly smaller in file size than Flix Pro's standard SWF output similar to the output of Flash's bitmap tracing feature more flexible and easier to configure than Flash's bitmap tracing feature, offering more convenient control over image quality a unique and valuable feature Image Quality vs. File Size When compressing video, the main thing that most people are concerned with is perceived image quality versus file size. This is the same for all three products, since they use the same codec (the software that translates the video into Flash format). Flix Pro offers many configuration settings that allow you to balance file size (number of bytes), dimensions (height and width measured in pixels) and image quality. Flix Pro 3 produced a recognizable 500KB SWF based on a 145MB AVI movie, Impressive -- especially since it took only about half a minute to do the job. (Figure 1.) The video import function in Flash MX, based on a Sorensen Spark codec, produced dramatically inferior results with a 685KB file (Figure 2) and approximately equivalent results at 2.3MB (Figure 3). Figure 1. (500KB SWF, Wildform Flix Pro) The blocky, jagged image above represents quality loss resulting from translating a 145MB AVI file into a 500KB SWF using Flix Pro. It's much less blocky and jagged than Figure 2 below, which represents a 685KB movie produced using the native video import function in Flash MX. (All files include 16Kbps audio.) Figure 2. (685KB, native video import function in Flash MX) Figure 3. (2.3MB, native video import function in Flash MX) Figure 4 below gives an impression of the original. Figure 4. (original, 145MB AVI) It's not surprising that Flix Pro beats the built-in video compression in Flash MX. The built-in Sorenson Spark codec uses constant bit rate (CBR) single-pass technology, while Flix Pro uses variable bit rate (VBR) dual-pass technology. A CBR codec uses the same number of bits to represent each frame. VBR determines which frames have more motion and thus need more bits to maintain image quality. Using two passes allows the codec to analyze all frames before deciding which frames will benefit the most from extra compression. Unless there is very little motion in the video, double-pass VBR should yield smaller files than single-pass CBR for the same perceived quality. In addition to producing smaller, better quality files then the native Flash MX video import function, Flix Pro can produce SWFs compatible with the Flash 3-5 players, while the native Flash MX function produces SWFs that can only be played in the Flash 6 player. A more interesting question is how Flix Pro compares with Sorenson Squeeze for Macromedia Flash MX, a dual-pass VBR product whose price was reduced to $119 (from $299) in April 2002. On the basic quality-versus-file-size question, the two products are competitive. Figures 5 and 6 represent Sorensen Squeeze output. (I wasn't able to produce a SWF file With Sorensen Squeeze that was sufficiently close to the 500KB file from Flix Pro, so I'm showing one that's bigger and one that's smaller.) Figure 5. (665KB SWF, Sorenson Squeeze) Figure 6. (378KB SWF, Sorenson Squeeze) Since there isn't a clear winner on the quality-versus-file-size front, it will come down to price and features for most buyers. For those who aren't interested in "vectorized" output and aren't concerned about batch processing (i.e. seldom process more than a few video files on any given dictation), Wildform Flix Lite is the obvious choice. System Requirements Price: US$149.00   Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000 Professional, XP   64MB RAM 10MB free disk space Pentium II 233MHz Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher Macintosh OS 8.6/9.x/10.x 64MB RAM 10MB free disk space Power PC Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher Copyright 2002, Michael Hurwicz, All Rights Reserved