You've got a whole passel of Flash videos and you'd like to publish them on your corporate or personal Web site. You don't want to go through YouTube for content reasons, or because it's sensitive information. That's where Moyea PlayerBox comes in. Feed this app a video in FLV format, and it converts it to SWF (a Web-based Flash format), and provides you with the HTML needed to play it. You can also customize the look and feel of the Web player using numerous templates.
I found PlayerBox easy to use. In just a few menu screens and clicks, I had a Web page with an embedded video player up and running, which I previewed using Firefox. Simply uploading the entire folder contents to your own Web site via FTP would publish it to the Web, or with some coding knowledge, the player can be integrated into an existing Web site.
One drawback of Moyea PlayerBox is that it works only with FLV files. Most movie-making programs and video cameras can create AVI or WMV format as well. PlayerBox recommends Moyea's own $100 Flash Video MX Pro for converting files. For a free alternative, check out Riva FLV Encoder.
PlayerBox comes in pretty handy as a way around YouTube. The ability to customize the look and feel of a Web video player is useful, too,. For the $60 sticker price, though, I'd expect it to come with some rudimentary converting ability, especially since most video creators aren't going to be able to save as FLV.
Note: The demo version of PlayerBox imprints a watermark and hyperlink on the completed movie file. This version is free for personal usage but may not be used for any commercial purpose. The commercial license costs $60 for use on a single computer and removes these restrictions.
--Steve Horton
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