Video2swf is one of your problems, we never could get quality output from it.

Take a look at Adobe Premiere [adobe.com...] it should do everything you need.

A less expensive, but not as robust alternative is iMovie [apple.com...]

Sorry but I don't understand how spending $799 for Adobe Premier Pro is "less expensive" than somethig that comes free on all Macs (iMovie). Did I missunderstand something? There has to be a better alternative.

I don't make movies (which appears to be the focus of Adobe Premier Pro). I just want to edit small homemade movies that others send to me so I can put it on their website.

I've downloaded several different video programs so far but none of them do everything I need, which is to make minor edits, add a play button on the front and then convert to .swf.

PS. I haven't had any problems with Video2swf. But I haven't used it for editing until now either. Maybe it degrades after editing.

Sorry but I don't understand how spending $799 for Adobe Premier Pro is "less expensive" than somethig that comes free on all Macs (iMovie). Did I missunderstand something? There has to be a better alternative.

so far but none of them do everything I need

Well it isn't "less expensive" then free. But it does do everything you need.

If this is something you are doing for clients then maybe a small increase in the fee you charge for doing these conversions for your clients would be enough to offset the cost of buying software that does everything you need.... and does it really well BTW.

Lorel, you misread my statement. I said a less expensive alternative to Premiere was imovie.

You may want to take a look at Final Cut Express: [store.apple.com...]

I already tried imovie and it wasn't suitable for some reason - don't remember now because I've tried so many video converters but it probably didn't convert to .swf like a lot of other apple products.

I finally found one that does everything I need at a reasonable price - Video to Flash Converter. There are lots of video converters but very few that include a player and convert to .swf. It's owned by a company in China and I don't like buying unAmerian. But Hey! It's the best I've found yet.

However I can't export the movie as .swf in Quicktime so saved it as .mov...

You have to be careful during this, .mov is a container file like .avi. It can contain many types of video, it's the codec used that determines what it really is. You want to be sure you are using the same codec with the same video properties as your input file.

Each time you convert a video you will have loss in quality. Each conversion is a destructive process, working with high quality video like DV that has a high bitrate is negligible but when you're working with highly compressed video it can have a substantial effect.

Changes to the content of frames, codec, bitrate and frame size all require re-encoding however where edits are are concerned if the properties of your output video are the same as the input you can minimize the re-encoding to where the edits were made.

For example if you're working with MPEG and you made a cut and added a few frames to the start like you have done the better editors are going to only encode the first few frames and copy the rest of the video into a new file. If you made a cut and then added a transition they will only re-encode where the edit was made. If you change the bitrate the entire video will get re-encoded.

@Travelin Cat .

You may want to take a look at Final Cut Express

Like I said, I need a program that converts to .swf.

@coalman. Thanks for explaining what might degrade quality when converting programs. So far I'm only cutting out a few seconds at the beginning of the movie and quality doesn't seem to have degraded with this program on the videos I've tried.