Is there any easy (and preferably free) means to save a flash animation to one’s desktop on a PC?
It’s one of the browser specific kind of things…
It seems I need two steps. I found and saved the original file, but can’t seem to find a viable converter now to change it from the original .flv format into .avi or something I can play in a media player. This was a personal flash message sent to me by a friend, and I want to save the animation for that reason. Don’t worry folks - I’m not ripping off any record company or tv network from youtube! 
VideoLan/VLC says* that it plays .flv files. If it plays them, it can likely convert them. Format conversion is a core feature.
*with a couple of caveats.