How do I play this thing on this other thing?

May 27, 2011 2:35 PM

How can I play .f4v (Flash Video?) files on an iPhone?

I just got an iPhone, and I confess, I'm a total n00b, but I was wondering how I can play .f4v files on the iphone. I have about 60 gigs of lecture videos I would like to take with to watch on the go (aka subway), and they are .f4v files. I've been watching them on my mac with the VLC player, but I don't know how to make this work on the phone. Do I need to convert the videos to another format? Thank you so much for your help.

posted by abirae to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

I am not sure, but: You can get VLC Player for the iPhone. Unfortunately, when I tested this you had to load the files via iTunes, but that might get you most of the way there.

Barring that you could use ffmpeg to convert them to .m4.
posted by straw at 2:38 PM on May 27, 2011

you might try using Handbrake for this. it can output Flash video so it may also take it in. there's presets in there for iPhone output - just use those and then drop the converted files into iTunes to sync them to your phone.
posted by mrg at 3:03 PM on May 27, 2011

Alternatively, you can use AirVideo on your iMac and iPhone to convert the videos on the fly as requested. In a nutshell, AirVideo Server runs on your mac, and streams the files to your iPhone on request via the internet, converting them on the fly as necessary. The server is free and the iPhone app has a free and paid version, but the free version is a trial and not really useful. This would also solve the problem that you wont be able to get all 60GB of that video on your phone, either.

Alternatively, If you don't already have the VLC Player app on your iPhone, I'm not sure if you can still get; i think it was pulled. If it's still there however, grab it now while you still can and see if it'll work for you.
posted by cgg at 3:13 PM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

VLC has been pulled thanks to the efforts of some of its more dogmatic developers.
posted by entropicamericana at 3:28 PM on May 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

VLC has been pulled, which sucks, otherwise this would be trivial.

Mentioned previously, Handbrake will convert the files so you can import them to your iTunes library and then sync them to your phone. I've also been using AirVideo lately to do the same thing, and I think it's faster. You can also use AirVideo to play the files without converting, but you'll need to have the computer that has the files to be connected to the network.

You can queue up a list of files in Handbrake and it'll go through them overnight. That would be your cheapest/easiest option.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 3:35 PM on May 27, 2011

I love the previously mentioned AirVideo. It works on PC/Mac and lets you stream videos from your computer to your iOS without converting them. Works over WiFi or via 3G as well. It's a great program.
posted by msbutah at 4:28 PM on May 27, 2011

I was lucky enough to grab the VLC app before it got yanked. But I would still encode a video to MP4 before putting it on my iPad. I suspect it plays more smoothly that way - though I have no evidence.

QuickMediaConverter is the nearest thing to a universal translator as I've found. It's nothing charming to look at but it works.
posted by Trurl at 5:17 PM on May 27, 2011

I've found Miro Converter to be very good. Even sends the video to iTunes for loading onto the iPhone: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/
posted by cherrypj at 5:49 PM on May 27, 2011

If you're on a system that can run ffmpeg, this command should handle it:

ffmpeg -i FILENAME.flv -vcodec copy -acodec copy FILENAME.mp4

posted by ndfine at 1:56 PM on May 28, 2011