for developers

The Riva FLV Encoder is a free tool that will transode your existing videofiles to the FLV format which can then be used in Flash. The AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, WMV video formats are supported. If you have ever been frustrated or hit a dead end after you shoot video and then have a difficult time actually watching it in the format of your choice–which for many people today is Flash–this is a very handy tool to facilitate doing that.

Video file conversion, in addition to video compression are huge hurdles for many people who are now getting into video for the web. Unfortunately handling video files is often not as straightforward as simply uploading a JPEG or gif picture file.

[link via Ultrashock]

Nathan Pitman has pointed out two really nice and useful Fireworks Autoshapes:

• Orb Autoshape
• 3D Box

Autoshapes is a relatively new feature in Fireworks that allows you to create complex shapes just as easily as you would create simple shapes like circles or rectangles.

Fireworks from Macromedia has rapidly become one of the most popular and indispensable tools for rapid prototyping–among many other things–because of its flexibility and power. Autoshapes is a terrific addition to what was already a very strong suite of tools contained within Fireworks and if you haven’t yet dived into it Pittman’s tutorial would be a terrific place to start.