SWF & FLV Player Pro

Company	:	Eltima Software
Price	:	US$19.95
Rating	:

Watching streaming Flash movies on websites (e.g. YouTube) has become the norm. But a lot of us would also like to save these movies on our computers which by default is not an option. There are a number of freeware and shareware which can do the job but most of them are not very user friendly. So is the SWF & FLV Player Pro from Eltima Software any different?

Firstly, I think Eltima should come up with a shorter and easier name. SWF & FLV Player Pro is not something that is easy to remember.

The basic Player version is a free download. As the name suggests, it's an application for playing Flash files (SWF and FLV). It has movie controls which allow you to fast-foward, rewind and play movies frame-by-frame. It also allows you to create playlists of your favourite clips.

However in order to save Flash movies to your Mac you need the Pro version. In addition to the saving option the Pro version also allows you to view in full-screen mode and capture screenshots.

The interface looks a little messy because it consists of three separate windows: the viewer, movie controls and playlist. I wonder why these can't all be incorporated into one. And for downloading files there's yet another window!

As all I really wanted to do was to save Flash files, I tried to do just this as soon as I installed the software but struggled to understand the steps required. It wasn't a straight forward thing as clicking a Save button and you're done. So I read through the Help menu and followed the instructions. But still I couldn't get it to save.

So I wrote to Eltima. After several emails I finally got it to work. The steps involved saving a particular file and renaming it with a .FLV extension. Strangely the application's Help page didn't spell this out. This is only mentioned on Eltima's website which I was given a link to via one of the emails.

One feature which I had hoped the Pro version would have was the ability to convert Flash movies to other formats like QuickTime or MP4, for easy transfer to my iPod. Unfortunately this feature is not there.

In conclusion, I was hoping for SWF & FLV Player Pro to be an easy-to-use software - something I could use to save movies from websites. Needless to say, I found it difficult and not user-friendly. If it weren't for my communications with Eltima (and their helpful support staff) I would have probably given up trying to use it. And having to pay US$19.95 to have to struggle to download movies doesn't make much sense if you can struggle for free with freeware avalaible on the Web.