I got a free upgrade to the pro version of an app called SWF & FLV Player. This application is made by a company called Eltima. You might know them for their pro-level Flash apps like Flash Optimizer. SWF & FLV Player is offered as a freeware. You can upgrade to pro for $19.95. There’s a lot of cool features with this application for viewing Flash files.

I have to say my favorite is how you can browse URLs. Say I want to play a game from AddictingGames.com in SWF & FLV Player. I find the web address for the game, in this case: http://addictinggames.com/stormthehouse.html. I now open up SWF & FLV Player and click on Browse URL. I type in that URL, and the program automatically scans the website and shows all the Flash objects in it.

This will often find some advertisements but also the Flash file we want. Simply select the Flash object you want and click open. There you go. I can now play the game in SWF & FLV Player. What’s better about this than playing in a browser? Well a few things. I can easily go full screen (Flash is often vector based so upscaling to fullscreen keeps hi-rez). You can also get a glimpse of how the game creator made the game. Since you can zoom out and move around the flash file you can see things you wouldn’t normally be able to see when playing games on the web. This is all the extra stuff behind the Storm The House game:

The other really cool feature (only for Pro though) is the save button. Instead of just opening a Flash file it’s found, you can also save it. You can build a little playlist of Flash files you’ve saved through SWF & FLV Player. That means when I’m offline on a plane I can play all those games I love from AddictingGames without having to be connected (and I can play them in Fullscreen).

The one thing I was expecting was that I could also view and save YouTube files, which would be very cool. Although when I tried to browse through a YouTube site, it would find the YouTube player flash file, but not the actual movie. It also didn’t work very well on DailyMotion. This might just be me not doing it correctly, or it could be that these video-sharing sites put extra protection in. The Save feature is really cool for games, but would be even cooler for YouTube videos.

The application also has all the things you would expect from a Flash player too. You can fast forward, rewind, zoom, change quality, take screenshots, and a lot more. Give it a try and maybe upgrade to the Pro.

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