"OK, I know this question has probably been asked a millions times, but I'm desperately looking for a way to do this. I have Googled, and probably have installed most of the programs that say they can do this.. with no luck. Can anybody help? I have a Flash Banner that I need to make into an animated GIF. The help would greatly be appreciated. What's the best way to do this?" ---- Adobe Forum
Converting SWF to GIF is not easy, you need a professional SWF Converter, there are many applications online just like what stated in the answer above. However, it is maybe hard to tell which one will be suitable for you.
From my own experience, there is one program named Doremisoft SWF Video Converter which I tried, perfect, it can convert SWF videos, SWF movies, SWF flash banner, SWF games etc to animated GIF files. Besides, it can also convert SWF to other images files such as PNG, BMP, JPG etc.
Not only can SWF Video Converter can convert SWF to images files, it is also powerful enough to convert SWF to common videos such as AVI, WMV, MPG, MOV, MP4, FLV, 3GP, VOB, ASF, MKV etc.
Tips: If you need to convert SWF to animated GIF on Mac, you can turn to SWF Converter for Mac
Step by step to convert SWF to animated GIF on Windows
Step 1: Load the SWF files
Click "Select File" button or simply drag & drop the SWF videos to SWF Converter.
Step 2: Select SWF as output format
Click the "Profile" button, you will get a format list full of various formats(including video/audio/image formats). choose "Picture"-"Picture GIF(*gif)" to be the output format. You can convert SWF to any other formats so long as you pick the proper formats from the list.
Step 3: Edit SWF files
SWF Video Converter equips with full featured editing functions, click "Crop, you can crop the video frame to delete the unwanted parts, adjust video parameters such as width/height, add watermark to the video file and adjust the transparency & position of the watermark as you wish.
Step 4: Convert SWF to GIF
Click "Start" to free convert SWF to GIF.
Tips: You can also turn to Moyea SWF Video Converter which offers more image output options for you to convert SWF to various image files such as JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, animated GIF etc.