I would like to convert media files, downloads from Youtube and other sites, from their standard FLV formats to a format that will play on other devices, like my Blackberry that doesn’t support the flv format, or my iPod, etc.
I am using 10.3 but will be upgrading as soon as 11.1 is officially released.
Thanks.
This is not as easy as you may think, since encoding to BB or iPod requires specific encoder settings. You can use either ffmpeg or mencoder for the encoding. You can also try out h264enc (see my signature) but beware that h264enc is not for everyone. It aims to be the Swiss-knife of CLI front-ends for mencoder. It has presets for both the BB and iPod (BB preset not tested as I don’t have one). As for using ffmpeg, can’t help you much with that since I don’t use it at all
Also note that you can get major A/V sync problems when reencoding FLV files from Youtube, and it ain’t easy to fix them
silkmaze wrote:
>
> I would like to convert media files, downloads from Youtube and other
> sites, from their standard FLV formats to a format that will play on
> other devices, like my Blackberry that doesn’t support the flv format,
> or my iPod, etc.
>
> I am using 10.3 but will be upgrading as soon as 11.1 is officially
> released.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
There is a plugin for FF that will convert .flv`s to different formats on the fly, not tested it yet but it will use ffmpeg or mencoder backends for the conversion.
Just browse the mutimedia plugins on the firefox site.
I must stress though I have not tested this yet so YMMV.
HTH
–
Mark…
Nil illegitimi carborundum
I was just fooling around on VLC and found that I could use it to convert flv to a host of different formats. Thanks for the tip about h264enc, that one was a little too much for me, though.
baskitcaise wrote:
> There is a plugin for FF that will convert .flv`s to different formats on
> the fly, not tested it yet but it will use ffmpeg or mencoder backends for
> the conversion.
>
> Just browse the mutimedia plugins on the firefox site.
>
> I must stress though I have not tested this yet so YMMV.
>
> HTH
>
>
Well just gave it a quick look and by default it converted a .flv from youtube to a .wmv which played in xine ok.
not got anymore time to mess with the settings on my way out this instant so “caveat emptor” 
HTH
–
Mark…
Nil illegitimi carborundum
yes, VLC can do some of this, but that doesn’t mean that the files it outputs will be BB/iPod compatible. I’m definitely sure they won’t be if you use h264 as video format. If you want something simple with a GUI, try WinFF which is available for both windows and linux
What was the plugin called??
Never mind. The media creator works too slowly and only on files that can be downloaded directly from the web. I was looking for a way to save a flv, while downloading, in a different format, and for a program that would convert files I already had on my drives, from flv to other formats.
As it turns out baskitcaise had the right idea. The plugin is called Downloadhelper. Once it is installed, and FF restarted open up the Add-ons and click on it then preferences. In there you can set the setting, so that it will automatically save all flv’s as a different format. This will also work on files already downloaded. Just right click on the Downloadhelper icon, that you should have on your tool-bar somewhere, and you will see on the menu that drops down “Convert Videos”. Click on that and follow the instructions.
Thanks for all the help.