MakeUseOf » flv

2 Free Applications You Can Use To Convert F4V Videos

Jessica Cam Wong — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 23:30:38 +0000

If you save videos to your hard drive for offline playback with flash video detection software on a somewhat regular basis, you might have surely noticed that the format for these videos can be in F4V. The F4V container file format is, in short, a higher-quality FLV file encoded with H.264 video standard (for more explanations, see the excellent Digital Video Formats Explained in plain English). Most powerhouse media players, such as VLC and Splayer, and Adobe Flash Player (which you should have as a plugin if you use Chrome, otherwise, get it at the official site) can read F4V files without much as a hiccup.

However, if you fancy editing this type of video, even simple edits like trimming, you might have a hard time finding compatible programs as not many any video-editing software available for free, can handle it. Most software that claim to do this are of the commercial variety, which you’ll find roaming the web and Google search results (try MakeUseof’s master list of search tips).

To remedy this, the most likely route to go will probably just be to re-encode into a common container file, such as AVI. Here are some converters that can convert these tricky-for-DVD-burning F4V files. Finally, those rare clips from Tudou and similar video-sharing sites won’t have to go to waste.

Avidemux [Cross-Platform]

I first expressed my satisfaction with the open-source Avidemux video editor, noting how it could embed subtitles in MP4 and FLV files, file types which the more commonly-used application for permanent subtitle “burning”, VirtualDub, doesn’t support (while it can do plenty of other tasks, like merging multiple videos). It actually can also read F4V files.

If you have some experience using VirtualDub, you probably won’t have much trouble using Avidemux. If you’ve never used it, here’s a quick rundown. After you open the video you want to use, Avidemux initially will ask you whether you want to use another non-crashing mode, but since it might also lead to changes applying to inaccurate frames, I usually choose ‘No’.

You might also get a warning about rebuilding your frame index, which you can usually just click ‘Yes’ to.

Then you can apply filters to your video (using Xvid or Divx), which means you can trim it, or embed subtitles, as detailed here, and finally choose an output format.

Free Video To iPhone Converter by DVDVideoSoft [Windows]

The generic name of this application may not hint at specific file formats, but rest assured, it does handle the file type in question. There’s a collection of video-ripping and converting software from this software publisher so just perform a search on CNET’s download.com for your specific device. Make sure to opt out of the DVDVideoSoft toolbar, unless you desperately want your homepage and default search engines to be changed to DVDVideoSoft’s web search.

As the name suggests, you’ll be able to convert the video to an iPhone-friendly MP4. This converter is simple as simple gets. You can choose 3 quality presets that change settings for formats according to the device that the video destined to reside in. There are the standard options to mass convert and to turn off the computer once conversion is completed, but there are also some unique features — namely, the ability to add converted videos to a new iTunes playlist, change the theme, and the fact that it’s available in 12 languages.

Now, I’ve only seen listed these two which worked great for me, but you might have luck with other video converters. I know I tried Hamster Video Converter and it couldn’t open this file, while I did have more luck with Daniusoft Video Converter Pro, which is paid. Surprisingly, I did get a few converters that don’t actually list F4V in their supported file formats to read it fine, so I’d recommend trying whatever converter you have first.

If you want to skip conversion altogether and own an iDevice; try these recently-featured free apps, VLC and OPlayer. If you know of an alternative for Android handsets or know of converters that support F4V, share it with us in the comments!

How To Embed Subtitles To MP4 & FLV Videos Using Avidemux

Jessica Cam Wong — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:30:56 +0000

Avidemux is an open-source video editor that satisfies your simple editing needs, such as cutting and encoding, and is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and BSD. You can also use this tool to compress videos using VirtualDub (which you can also do in Windows Movie Maker, but the video will most likely end up with black bars).

It is one of many video editors for Linux, some of which are meant for more professional video production (Cinelerra and Lightworks). Although Avidemux isn’t a powerhouse video-editing software, it actually has a lot of the features that I thought made VirtualDub shine for the price of $0.

One of these features I previously discussed is the ability to embed subtitles permanently in videos. A limitation that you’re presented with if you use VirtualDub a lot (despite all it can do) is that this Windows-only program only accepts a small set of video file types, mainly AVI, MPG, and MPEG. Nowadays, if you own any sort of portable device, be it an Android smartphone, an MP3 player (iPod Touch) or some gaming device like the PSP, you will certainly need your videos to be in MP4 format. Avidemux not only supports MP4 but it also is capable of embedding subtitles so perhaps you can save yourself loads of video-converting steps (though you might still benefit from using dedicated converters for iPhone, PSP, etc.)

You will need to have the Xvid codec installed (recommended also if you’re interested in publishing videos on Youtube), which is pretty standard for video encoding applications.

1. Once you have loaded Avidemux up, press Ctrl + O to open your video (alternatively, go to File in the menu bar > Open) and select any AVI, MP4, or FLV video.

2. If you want to trim part of the imported video, use the sliders to set start and end points. Otherwise, go ahead and select the Xvid codec/mode in the Video drop-down menu. This enables you to use filters, which you can’t do in the default Copy Video mode.

You’ll get the Video Filter Manager window where you can select preset filters for common tasks, such as cropping, resizing, etc. Head to the Subtitles category, where you can choose to embed subtitles in SubRip text format (.srt), MicroDVD subtitle file format (.sub), or the more customizable SubStation Alpha file format (.ssa, .ass), which you saw on How To Create Your Own Subtitles. You can get the subtitles in the latter format using Subtitle Workshop, and Aegisub, which are among the best tools to edit subtitle files.

3. Double-click on the appropriate subtitle filter. Now select your subtitle file.

If you’re using the SSA subtitle filter like I am, there is really no need to adjust the line spacing, font scale, etc. since you probably specified those settings when you were creating your subtitles with, Aegisub for example, so the default values will do fine. If you downloaded the subtitles from the net, you can, of course, adjust these values.

Close out of the Video Filter Manager.

Even though there’s a Preview button, strangely enough, you won’t be able to preview the video with the subtitles. If, however, you use any other filter, such as resize, Preview will work fine.

4. Choose Copy under Audio mode, although you can also use the LAME codec for MP3, which you can learn more about in Audio File Formats Explained in Simple Terms.

Then select the video container/format (either FLV, MP4, AVI) you want to save the video.

5. Save the video.

The time taken to encode the video will depend on the length of the original video.

That’s it! One of the strongest points about Avidemux is definitely the ability to import FLV and MP4, something VirtualDub can’t currently do. One area where VirtualDub does shine though, is filters or plugins. There seems to be way more filters available on the web which can’t be ported to Avidemux. If there is one thing I wish Avidemux wouldn’t do is crash whenever I try to save the video in FLV. Otherwise, it works perfectly.

What do you use to embed subtitles permanently or do you prefer soft-subbed videos?

Photo credit: MazenI77

Download & Play Flash Files Using SWF & FLV Player

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:31:23 +0000

Time moves a lot faster in the virtual world. Less than a decade ago, embedding videos to websites was an absurd concept. Now it is exactly the opposite, videos are everywhere. People have no choice but to consume hundreds of megabytes of streaming video as their snacks.

Unfortunately, unless you are living in Finland, a broadband internet connection is not one of your human rights. Most of us still have to put up with snail speed connections and watching “coughing” streaming videos is a torture. That’s why people come up with many alternative methods to download web videos.

The problem is, while most browsers can play web videos by default (with a little help from plugins), you need a dedicated application to play the downloaded file. Instead of looking for media players which support Flash videos (the common format of web videos), why don’t we use an application that was specifically built to play Flash files? Something like SWF & FLV Player.

Go Beyond Videos

SWF & FLV Player is a free app – available for Windows and Mac – that you can use to play all kinds of common Flash files that you would find on the net like movies and games.

To try the software, I downloaded a YouTube video and then opened it using SWF & FLV Player.

The video is played in the main window.

The playback control is opened in a separate panel where you can play/pause. fast forward, rewind, increase/decrease the volume, adjust the zoom, etc. There’s also a tiny preview screen that you can reveal/hide.

But the app can do a lot more than play Flash files. I tried playing one small SWF game that I downloaded years ago using Safari and everything went well without any glitch. All the game controls is functional.

The app also allows you to open Flash files on the web. If you know the exact location of the file, something like “http://www.whateveraddress.com/flashfile.swf“, you can use the “File – Open URL” menu.

Then write down the address in the pop up window and click OK.

But if you only know the address of the site (which has a flash movie), use the “File – Download online Flash movies” menu instead. Write down the site address, click browse, then SWF & FLV Player will analyze the site and list all the files on that address which are supported. You can treat the page as you normally do in the browser, or you can choose one of the filter results and click Preview to watch it.

The paid Pro version of the app allows you to save the flash files to your hard drive. So you will have more convenient ways to download flash files from the net. There are more advanced features in the Pro version for those who need extra bells and whistles.

Another noteworthy feature of this app is the ability to manage flash files in a playlist. Open the Playlist window using the “Window – Playlist” menu.

Then you can manage your playlist from the playlist window. Beside adding and removing files, the playlist also allows you to repeat and shuffle.

There are many ways that you can use to download flash videos from the web, there are also multimedia players that are capable of playing flash videos. But SFW & FLV Player lets you do everything from one place. Plus this one does flash games too.

Have you tried SWF & FLV Player? Do you know other alternatives? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below.

FLV Converter – A Freeware to Convert FLV Videos to AVI

Mahendra Palsule — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:01:26 +0000

The Flash FLV video format has become the default format for video on the web. Many popular video websites like YouTube, Google Videos, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, and Yahoo! Videos use the FLV video format. Meanwhile, most Windows desktop video programs used to play and edit videos use the Microsoft AVI file format. As a result, many users frequently need freware to convert FLV videos found on the web to AVI format on the desktop.

In this article, let us look at Free FLV Converter, a simple freeware application you can use to convert FLV videos to AVI.

Free FLV Converter is developed by Koyote Soft, and can also be downloaded from CNET Downloads. Free FLV converter can download embedded FLV (or SWF) videos directly from the Internet, and can convert FLV to AVI, iPod (MPEG4 or H.264), iPhone, 3GP, PSP, or MP3 audio only. Conversely, it can also convert videos from other formats (DivX, XviD, MpeG, DVD, and AVI) to FLV.

Installation

Download and run the setup program to install the software. It is a light-weight download at 6MB, compared to most other video converters, and does more than just convert videos as we shall see. The only thing you would want to take care of during installation, is to avoid installing the Dealio toolbar. This is a “bloatware” toolbar that is promoted to support this freeware application, but you can easily opt out of installation by deselecting the two checkboxes during setup. Select your preferred language the first time you launch the program.

Convert FLV To AVI

Let’s say you have already downloaded a video in FLV format to your PC and want to convert it to AVI. On the Free FLV Converter toolbar, click the Conversion from FLV button.

This will bring up a Select File Dialog from which you should select the FLV video file you wish to convert. A conversion window opens up showing the file to be converted at the top, and settings to be used for the conversion at the bottom. Click the Convert button at the bottom to convert the file.

You can customize the conversion settings if you wish. You can choose the output format, output quality, and location of the output video file in the Output configuration section. The video and audio sections allow you to set advanced settings for the codec, frame rate, aspect ratio, bit rate, etc. The default settings work fine if you don’t want to dive into technical details.

From this dialog itself, you can click the “+” button at the top to add more files to convert multiple videos in batch mode. The program shows you a preview while converting. The speed of conversion is quite fast, and the program did not slow down my PC or interfere with other applications, thus working very efficiently.

Convert To FLV

In much the same way as converting FLV to other formats, you can also use Free FLV Converter to convert other video formats to FLV. Just click the Conversion to FLV button on the toolbar, select the file to convert, and you get a FLV file that you can embed on your website. You also get a HTML webpage created automatically with the embedded video.

Search Videos

You can use Free FLV Converter to search for videos on popular video sharing websites without opening your browser. Click the Search button on the toolbar to search for videos. You can select websites like YouTube, Google, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, etc. from the Site drop-down list, enter your search terms, and click Search.

The search results are shown in the right pane. You can play, download, or go to that video’s page on the site. You can multi-select and download multiple videos at once.

Download Videos

If you already know the URL for a certain video that you wish to download, click the Tube downloader button on the toolbar. Here you can enter the URL of the video page that you wish to download.

You can also load a text file containing a list of URLs of videos you want to download.

For a freeware application, Free FLV Converter’s feature set is very impressive. Are you familiar with any other freeware FLV to AVI converter? Share with us in the comments!

How To Copy & Edit YouTube Videos On Your Computer

Sharninder — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:01:32 +0000

YouTube is the biggest video sharing site on the planet. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for a review of the latest gadget, or a simple walking tour of a historical site, chances are you’d find it on YouTube.

Most videos uploaded to YouTube are made by amateurs like you and I, usually with modest video making equipment. It’s not a surprise that you’d find a lot of the videos lacking in quality and/or content.

Now, quality is something that you can’t do much about but if it is the content that is bothering you and you have the inclination and enthusiasm to make some changes, we’ll tell you how to go about it. Maybe one particular scene in a video really bothers you and you want to take it out. Well here’s one way to go about it.

If you want to know how to copy Youtube videos and edit them, it typically involves three steps. Since you can’t edit the videos on YouTube online, the first step is to actually download a copy of the video locally to your computer.

How to Copy YouTube Videos to your computer

There are a couple of different ways that you can copy YouTube videos to your computer and we’ve talked about a few in the past, see 18 Free Ways To Download Videos. So we won’t dwell too much on this part. Searching MakeUseOf for "download youtube videos" will bring you plenty of options.

Which brings us to the second step in the process.

Converting FLV files to Windows Media Video Files (WMV)

There are dozens of software available all around the web that could potentially help you do this conversion, but why bother with all that searching when we have the coolest open source solution for the job, ffmpeg. If you’re comfortable with the command line, you can use ffmpeg directly or download and install the excellent WinFF utility, which is basically a graphical wrap-around for the app.

Launch WinFF and click on the add button to add the FLV file you just downloaded. Select “Microsoft“ from the Convert To drop down and select the WMV2 Generic option from the Device Presets drop down. Choose a location to save the converted file to and click on convert. WinFF will launch ffmpeg which will do the conversion for you without you having to use any command line kung fu.

Editing Videos using Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a free software bundled with Windows which can be used to edit and enhance videos and it has built-in support to read WMV files. Mark has previously written two excellent articles on editing movies using Windows Movie Maker and those should be enough to get you started.

Use WMM to remove the offending scene(s). Use the preview window to view the results of your artistry as soon as you’re ready.

When you’re done with editing the video, click the Publish Movie button and export the movie using one of the many choices given, including burning the movie to a DVD or writing a new WMV file to the disk for playing on a computer.

Do you know of any better ways how to copy and edit a YouTube video? If so, let us know.

How To Download Free Hulu Movies To Your Computer

Tim Watson — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:40:07 +0000

I’m a big fan of Hulu. It lets me catch up on my favorite shows, and, thanks to generous advertisers, doesn’t cost me a dime. Hulu has new programs, reruns, and full-length movies.

One problem, though. Hulu videos stream in Flash video, and there wasn’t any way to download and save programs for mobile viewing. That was true until I read up on the appropriately-named Hulu Video Downloader, a simple yet powerful little program, for which I have yet to find a free equal.

Using HVD couldn’t be much easier. Once you navigate to your desired program in your browser of choice, highlight and copy (Ctrl+C) the page’s URL. If it’s from a supported site, it will appear in HVD’s top field automatically. From there, you select the format for your target file, and click Add. HVD takes over from there, downloading and converting the video file.

Video formats available in the free version include MPEG2, AVI, and native FLV. To convert to other file formats, such as iPod or PSP, we suggest the recently-reviewed VideoSpiritLite. The GOM Player can playback FLV video files without conversion.

Once the download’s complete, you simply open the resulting video file in your favorite media player. Now you need not worry about episodes of your favorite show “expiring” from the site. I wish now that I had found this program before Dollhouse episodes started disappearing.

If you want to download HD versions of the shows, or download more than one show at a time, you’ll need to upgrade to the pro version, which lets you pull videos from a dozen other sites besides Hulu.

There’s more Hulu on MakeUseOf, right this way. How do you archive your favorite shows? What are some can’t-miss shows on Hulu? Play program director and let us know some of your favorites in the comments.

Place Yourself & Your Downloads Into Orbit

MariaFR — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:01:37 +0000

As a proud self-called geek, I must confess one of the activities I am really fond of is downloading games, videos, software, and so on and so forth. After trying a number of download managers, accelerators and those sorts of helpers, I must say I have made up my mind and chosen one which really satisfies my needs: Orbit Downloader.

Orbit Downloader is much more than another simple download manager since it incorporates a set of features that definitely make it unique and useful. And of course I am not just talking about it being completely free; while this is undoubtedly an attractive feature, there is much more to Orbit than that.

A True Catcher

Something that has become usual in download managers since some time ago ““ I’ve seen this in Flashget for instance – is the ability to allow several connections per download. Not only does Orbit support this function, as well as pausing and resuming downloads, but it also integrates seamlessly to Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera and Firefox, the latter through an add-on that is installed together with the application.

So far, nothing seems to be too innovative or special if compared to other download managers, but let me say that Orbit stands out for being a really light program with a truly user-friendly interface, suitable both for beginners and advanced users.

What caught my attention the most was that it caught more downloads than any other download software. In other words, it is able to work in websites which are in theory protected against this kind of software such as MegaUpload.

Just Get it!

Other features of Orbit Downloader worth mentioning are its ability to limit speed, streaming support and Flash downloads. When working with Orbit Downloader, it will automatically detect and download flash files (including FLV) from any website. This way, whether you’re browsing YouTube, Pandora, Myspace or Imeem, Orbit will download any multimedia file it detects. It also presents a P2P net which can potentially increase download speeds. However, I must say I have not been able to completely appreciate this feature so far.

Be Tidy!

Something that has truly helped me to overcome my anxiety problems and stop having my PC totally stuck for trying to download things at the same time is its scheduling function. Orbit Downloader allows you to schedule your downloads by day, time and frequency. You can even set it to turn off the computer once the download is complete.

To sum up, if you have had enough with the traditional download support of your browser and are quite tired of the same old programs, I would suggest you putting Orbit Downloader into orbit. And believe me, this is a program you will be happy to keep in your system tray.

Which download tool do you use and why? Let us know in the comments.

How To Extract Audio From FLV Files [Mac Only]

Jackson Chung — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 15:01:28 +0000

I’m not an advocate of piracy but here’s a cool idea to grab songs off YouTube. As you may know, YouTube has a huge collection of music videos. Sometimes, I’d watch a music video over and over again just to listen to the song. I’ve just found a nifty application which will extract the audio from FLV files (YouTube videos).

Most sites serve their videos as FLV (Flash Video) files. I’ll just be using YouTube as an example. Video files from YouTube are generally in 2 formats: FLV and MP4. Normal quality videos are formatted in FLV and high quality videos are formatted in MP4.

Contained within a flash video are the video and audio tracks. Using iExtractMP3, the audio track can be split from any FLV file. The perk of using this particular application is: no transcoding is performed when extracting the audio – meaning that there is no loss in quality.

That’s right, iExtractMP3 only grabs the audio, whatever the format (AAC or MP3) from the video file. And it does it amazingly fast too. It managed to extract the audio of a 3 minute long video in only 4 seconds.

And you don’t need to be a brainiac to use it, either. Simply download videos from YouTube, we’ve covered several methods here at MakeUseOf:

And drop the FLV file into iExtractMP3, select a destination and click ‘Extract’.

If you fancy an online method of exactly the same procedure, Karl has the low-down.

iExtractMP3 is Universal Binary and will work on Mac OS X 10.4 and onwards. Here is the original website in Japanese.

Oh and for those of you who prefer web apps, you may try VidToMP3, an online video to MP3 converter.

Do you know of any other Mac (or Windows) application which can extract audio from FLV files? Share them in the comments!

How To Download Music From Deezer, Pandora And More

Jason K — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:01:21 +0000

Websites such as Deezer, Pandora, imeem, Last.fm (and others) all serve free streaming music – often bundled with certain restrictions that reduce their convenience to users. A number of separate various applications exist to download music from specific sites (such as Freezer which exists to download from Deezer, Jiwa, and imeem only. Or tools like VidToMP3 that can convert Youtube videos to MP3.), so their range is limited.

Today we’ll show you an all-inclusive method that can download songs from Pandora and most, if not all, websites. The drawback? No automatic naming, the files are in FLV format rather than MP3, and you’ll have to drag them out of the cache yourself. However, user input is minimal, especially on playlist type websites.

BEFORE YOU PROCEED! : The following instructions described below may violate the Terms of Service of the aforementioned websites (and also have various moral implications). This tutorial is provided for your convenience only – all actions you undertake using this tutorial are yours alone and MakeUseOf cannot be held liable for any damages incurred.

The basic premise of the method is to kill the HTTP headers that tells the content to expire so that the content will be cached – where you then drag it out of the cache, convert it to MP3, and add it to your library. We’ll be using a small program called Proxomitron, and as usual, we’re focused on Firefox.

Set up Proxomitron

Download and install Proxomitron. When you first run it, you’ll be greeted by a rather interesting (eye stabbing) interface. To change this, click Config and select Don’t use textures.
Uncheck Web Page Filters, we will not need them. If you want, you can take a selective look by clicking Web Page under Edit Filters, but at least one of the default options interferes with the ability to use music streaming websites.

Click Headers under Edit Filters. Check the following, but uncheck everything else:
- Cache-Control: always cache (in)
- Expires: always cache (in)
Hit OK. At this point, Proxomitron is all configured. The next steps will deal with setting up Firefox to use Proxomitron.

Set up Firefox and Download Songs

Open up Firefox. Head over to Tools â†’ Options… â†’ Advanced â†’ Network â†’ Settings, and hit Manual Proxy Configuration. Set it to use localhost and port 8080. Also check that the cache quota is sizable based on the amount of music you want to download at once (I have mine set at 50MB).

At this point Firefox is configured to run its connection through Proxomitron, which will filter out the unwanted HTTP headers. Head over to a music streaming website of your choice and load up a song.
Head over to the cache folder once it’s finished loading. You can do this step after loading a bunch of songs, as long as the number of songs you’ve loaded doesn’t grow beyond the cache size, at which point files start getting automatically pruned.
- On XP it’s C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random].default\Cache
- Vista: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[random].default\Cache
- Portable Firefox: \FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\Cache

Sort the list by Date Modified so that the most recent files end up at the top. Generally the Date Created is when the streaming was initiated, while the Date Modified is when the stream finished downloading. Make sure the size is realistic (you generally want something above 1000KB), then copy/paste the file to a different folder and rename it with a .flv extension.

Convert the .flv file to .mp3 with a program of your choice. I prefer WinFF. You may also use online FLF to MP3 converter like FLVto.

That’s the process in a nutshell. Find a website that defies this method? Any easier method to download music from Pandora and alike music streaming sites? Tell us about it in the comments.