Three Things We Canno Do with SWF Video Files

As is customary, whenever we speak of SWF, we'll have to say something about its definition, applications, etc. Yes, the talk is no more than a platitude, but still, it is worth doing so.

As described in Wikipedia, SWF or Shockwave flash was created by Macromedia and owned by Adobe. It is a file format containing animations or applets of varying levels of interactivity and performance. Generally speaking, SWF files can be played in a web browser using Adobe Flash plug-in. So far, SWF has become one of the most popular formats using on the web, that's why we can find many SWF contents on the internet. It is mainly used for creating web pages including banners, advertisement, videos games.

Although SWF is widely used, it doesn't mean that SWF is almighty; since there are still something out there we cannot do with it. Just to give a few example as below.

1. We cannot play SWF video files on Apple Devices. As mentioned above, SWF can be viewed on Adobe Flash plug-in, which unfortunately, has never been admitted by Apple gadgets, such as iMac, iPhone (5/4S/4/3G/3), iPad (4/2/iPad Mini/New iPad), Apple Television, MacBook, and so on. Besides, all programs related to iOS or Mac OS cannot support the playback of SWF files directly, such as iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, FCP, QuickTime, therefore, we must rely on the third-party software. For example, in order to play SWF on QuickTime, we will have to convert SWF to QuickTime MOV with the help of a powerful Mac SWF converter.

2. We cannot enjoy SWF videos on most popular mobile phones. Due to the format restriction, SWF files cannot be compatible with most mobile phones like Nokia, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry, Motorola, etc. In this case, it is quite necessary to convert SWF to mp4 so as to break the format limitation first.

3. We cannot Upload Adobe Flash Animated Video to YouTube or other websites directly. The reason is that those websites support FLV and other common video formats with the exclusion of SWF. Similarly, to upload SWF to YouTube or other websites for sharing, it is a must to convert SWF to FLV as the compatible format first.