WMVs into Flv

March 17, 2008 1:13 PM

Please help me convert my mgp and wmv files to flash. Thanks in advance.

Need a program that can take my 2-3 minute clips and make them into flv files. I can spend up to a 100 dollars on a program but freeware works. I would also like them to maintain the quality. Any recommendations? Thank you

posted by boyinmiami to computers & internet (11 comments total)

I just discovered winff - really fast, really free. Supports your format.
posted by bleucube at 1:15 PM on March 17, 2008

VisualHub.

This question gets asked about every two days. Search, darn you.
posted by unixrat at 1:19 PM on March 17, 2008

I asked again, because im not looking just for freeware, if a program is worth it, im willing to pay...

sorry bleucube
posted by boyinmiami at 1:23 PM on March 17, 2008

VisualHub is not freeware. But it is the best solution.
posted by Mwongozi at 1:25 PM on March 17, 2008

I forgot to mention I am on a PC
posted by boyinmiami at 1:45 PM on March 17, 2008

If you have a friend with a Mac, ffmpegx is the best, and also free, solution. It puts a very nice interface on freely available *nix software that will convert anything to anything else.
posted by limited slip at 3:11 PM on March 17, 2008

I've had good experiences using Zamzar - a website rather than a piece of software but it worked very well all the same, I didn't have to download anything and it's free! If they're files from the web you might not even have to upload them either.
posted by eb98jdb at 3:24 PM on March 17, 2008

If this is something you want to do one time, why not download the full-function demo of Flash itself? You get 30 days free use.
posted by Class Goat at 3:24 PM on March 17, 2008

Riva FLV Encoder perhaps? I just tried to convert a WMV and it crashed, but maybe you'll have more luck.
posted by bumper314 at 4:53 PM on March 17, 2008

Sorenson Squeeze is probably the best out there, but it's a bit out of your price range. What has worked well for me in the past when I needed to download something good there and then is: Super. This works pretty well; they do, however, have the world's least user friendly website for downloading something.

(Seriously; it's heroically bad. I may have even ended up torrenting it)

Somebody once told me that Apex was good at $30: I have no way of knowing if that's true myself.
posted by Hartster at 3:25 AM on March 18, 2008

This question does get asked a lot, and the answers are always confusing, at least they have been to me, so I looked into this is detail.

You basically have three choices for general converting of one video format into another. I know your question asks about a specific conversion, but you might one day want to do something else, and you'll find yourself asking basically the same question.

Here's the heart of the matter. What you are doing is called transcoding, and there are three swiss army knife programs to do it that are free:

1. WinFF
2. MediaCoder
3. Super

The answer to your question is any one of those. Everything else costs money or is crap. And of these listed, MediaCoder is the only one with a user interface designed for humans. But here's the heart of it: all of these programs use another program under the hood to do the actual work. There are only two transcoding engines that matter on the PC:

mencoder
ffmpeg

WinFF uses only ffmpeg. The other two are packaged with both, and can be directed by the user to use either one, but are factory preset to use one or the other depending on what you are doing.

The problem is this, for some reason, all three of these programs don't call ffmpeg (or mencoder) the same way. So you input the same input file with the same size and bitrate settings, and you get wildly different output.

To wit, you should download all three and check that:

(a) the aspect ratio of the output file matches the input file
(b) the audio is sync'ed with the video throughout the duration of the entire file
(c) the file size isn't preposterously huge.

In my experience, one of these three programs does one kind of conversion better than the other two, but none is superior to the others overall.

FYI, these same programs will transcode for iPod video, cellphone video, to and from DVD format, etc. But double-check the output, as any errors or problems are often subtle.
posted by Pastabagel at 11:04 AM on March 18, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]