Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with flv

Download Adobe Presenter Flash Files

mathiu — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:29:05 -0800

I'd like to download a particular "Adobe Presenter" (Flash) document to show it to a group of students without having access to the Internet. How do I download these Flash files to replay them on my computer? I have tried a couple of Flash downloaders but I don't arrive at downloading "Adobe Presenter" Flash documents. I have the authorization to get the presentation offline but I don't have access to the "mother-file".

Here is an example of the type of presentation I'm looking at. (same link as in the title).

(Preferably macish, but both Windows and Mac solutions are appreciated)

I'mANoob..Tube

Mael Oui — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:08:44 -0800

Technostupid question filter: How to make unwatchable YouTube files from the Temp Files folder watchable on my computer? I watch loads of stuff on YouTube daily. Sometimes I download videos directly using KeepVid, but usually I don't bother. It used to be that I could navigate to my Temporary Internet Files folder, and all the videos that I had watched would be there. They'd be listed as something like 'get_video,' and I would drag each to my desktop and add '.flv' to the end of their name to watch them. I never had a problem watching YouTube videos (with VLC) this way.

Now all videos show up as .flvs automatically but none of them play. For instance, I now have 'video[1].flv' to 'video[11].flv' in the folder. Clicking on the files opens VLC, but there's no video or sound. There's just a bar scrolling through the would-be duration of the video (the time does display on the bottom bar of the window). Are these .flv files useless? Are any of them watchable or can they be made to be watchable? Why is it that I could get the files to work on my computer before by manually adding '.flv' but now actual '.flvs' (from YouTube) won't play? Am I making any sense? Is there a free, safe program that will make these videos watchable? I guess I'd prefer a small file converter program than another video application. I don't think VLC's to blame..?

This is on a Win2k computer. I'm still using an old IE to access YT. And I'm on very slow dial-up. *gulp* I LOATHE asking tech questions.. be gentle!

Facebook Link to .flv File

Timen — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:56:09 -0800

I am trying to link directly from Facebook to a .flv file hosted on my server. How can I accomplish this? The example .flv file I have for this problem is here. In my country, connecting abroad is slow. Domestic servers are quick, that's why I need to do this. Thanks!

FLV &SWF &youtbue &confusion

AceRock — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:06:10 -0800

FLV to SWF conversion? I'm trying to load an FLV (youtube video) file into Adobe Connect, but it only takes SWF files.

The way I understand it, the youtube player is a SWF file and the FLV video plays within that file.

So my question is: How do I get a playable youtube video onto my machine for uploading to Adobe Connect in SWF format? Any ideas?

Feline Leukemiain the UK

Mutant — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:46:41 -0800

Feline leukemia in The UK? I used to feed stay cats in The East End. There were several living in abandoned buildings that I'd feed, but a few strays would wander into my garden, hop on my window sill and meow until I let them in. I'd feed them, pet them, they'd inspect things in the flat, perhaps spend the night and leave. No big deal.

I'd wanted to adopt one of the cats, but back then I was spending lots of time working on the ground in Africa, and frequently wouldn't know when I left England when I'd be back.

I stopped doing that work, got married and about a year ago Mrs Mutant & I adopted two kittens. Everything is fine there, they've had all the necessary shots as indoor cats and are very happy and healthy.

About a week ago one of my strays returned. I suspect he's been around before, I just noticed one morning that he was on the window sill playing pawsie against the glass with one of our kittens. He came back again this AM, and even though I gave him some food outside, really wants to come inside.

I recall that FLV was epidemic in New York, and that cats either had to be vaccinated to isolated from infected cats to prevent the spread.

Even if I don't let him inside with the warmer weather our windows will be open. I've made screens to keep the kitten inside but constructed them out of chicken wire; an inquisitive paw will easily fit through the 1" or so holes.

So is there FLV in the UK? And if so what is the geographical spread? We're living in London's East End, postal code E1. I've googled about and can't find a definitive answer or even a dataset that would help me understand how pervasive this virus is.

I'd like to have as much information as possible before calling The Vet as this particular practice likes to sell (hard sell sometimes), and I'm sure if I ask if this vaccination is needed the answer will be a resounding yes!

legal video conversion

roue — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:32:10 -0800

I'd like to legally automate the conversion of quicktime .mov files videos to .flv, providing a drop box service, preferably under linux, but I'm getting tripped up on the first and last parts My users are requesting a simple video ingestion/conversion service and they don't want to use YouTube in an attempt to maintain control of their content.

There are plenty of tools that will take video file format x, y, and z and convert them to H.263/Sorensen Spark/H.264 .flv files. The obvious choices are ffmpeg / mencoder / vlc project libs. Unfortunately, to accomplish the conversion they have reverse engineered U.S. patent restricted commercial codecs (please correct me if I'm wrong). Since I'll be doing this in a professional capacity, I'd like it to be completely in compliance with the law.

So I guess my question is three fold:

1. What's the cheapest way I can legally do quicktime to flv conversion?

2. If I've got a choice, what's the best codec to use for web distribution?

3. What automatable software would you recommend?

We can probably afford to spend some money, but not, for instance, the $3000 On2 wants for it's conversion tools. Also, we have Adobe CS3 Flash and Flash Video Encoder, but I was unable to find a way to script them (on Mac) to do a conversion. Last, if at all possible I'd like to avoid really hacky solutions like "this cool app that records mouse movments and lets you play them back..."

Thanks.

Efficient video editing workflow starting from a DVD.

jedicus — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:46:46 -0800

How can my video editing workflow be more efficient and avoid time-consuming conversion between formats? Part of my job involves taking videos of presentations and uploading them to our project website. My current workflow (on a unibody MacBook) looks something like this:

1. Rip DVD to mpeg-4 using HandBrake. This typically takes twice realtime.
2. Import mpeg-4 into iMovie '08. This typically takes 9-10x realtime.
3. Perform minor edits, almost always just removing silence or presentations that are not ours.
4. Export to mpeg-4. This typically takes 11-12x realtime.
5. Convert to FLV using ffmpegx. This also takes a pretty long time.

The presentations are usually about an hour long, which makes this process take about a full day. Clearly the conversion times are killing me. What techniques or different programs do I need to make this workflow go faster? Note that I have no choice but to start with a DVD video and end with FLV, but the intermediate steps are open to change.

Why will flash video stop after only 2 seconds?

moonbird — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:09:34 -0800

Youtube (or other flash video) will freeze up after exactly 2 seconds of play, in any browser. It's an XP system, nice graphics card, memory, and all that. I can usually get one browser to play what the others won't, so when this happens I have to juggle between Firefox, Safari, Chrome and IE. I've searched for this kind of problem and nothing remotely similar comes up. It seems to happen randomly... things will be going smoothly video-wise then, boom, the video will play (without sound, oddly) for 2 seconds and freeze. I'm completely stumped.

CBC FLV

pcameron — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:49:34 -0800

I want to download a (non-copyrighted) FLV film (called A Film For Schools) from the CBC Radio 3 site, so I can post it on YouTube. How do I download it? The film is not copyrighted because it is made of public domain educational films (this is stated in the end credits). I really love the film and would like to make it more available, but the CBC Radio 3 website is badly designed and the video player stops to re-buffer every 30 seconds so I want to put it up on YouTube.

CC outside the US?

breaks the guidelines? — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:05:58 -0800

Is the term “caption” or “closed caption” and the “CC in a TV” symbol commonly recognizable to non-U.S. people? Working on producing some Flash video content with English audio for which subtitles will be available in multiple languages, including European, South American, and Asian languages. Would non-English-speaking people know that the “CC” symbol in a user interface control indicates the option for subtitling?

Wikipedia says that most of the world make no distinction between “subtitles” and “captions.” Is there a standard terminology and semiology to indicate this feature as universally as possible?

How to encode FLV on Mac w/ Open Source?

nicknd23 — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:03:43 -0800

What's the best way to encode FLV (flash video) files on Mac OS X without Quick Time Pro? Is there a good open source Mac encoder? I've used Riva for Windows but can't find anything comparable for Mac.

How does Google Video let you jump to any part of a video?

ssmith — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:23:24 -0800

How does Google/YouTube manage to allow a user to jump to any part of a video without having it preloaded first? Is it the player they use or maybe how the video file is hosted? I've got a client with a fairly standard 4-minute demo video they want to put up on their site. They'd like to be able to let a user click on some tabs across the top to jump to various sections. I've got this all working as long as the video has already finished preloading past that point in the video.

I'm not really sure how much it will help, but here's a link to the project.

I'd love to be able to have the same ability that, say, Google video uses where you can link directly to a specific point in the video without needing to have the video preloaded up to that point.

Is there a tutorial or some other resource out there with a good explanation of how to do this?

Help me forward to new page at end of Flash video

aaronetc — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 08:42:28 -0800

How do I get Flash to play a FLV and then go to particular URL when it's done? I'm working on a project where people view a Flash video (just an FLV file with no skin or anything else) and then get forwarded to another page when it's done. I need them to see the whole video, so I can't just put a text link for the next page. I don't know Flash especially well, and the code that I've found online keeps giving me demands for an onClipEvent handler. Ideas?

FlashVar Purgatory

prostyle — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:58:39 -0800

FlashVars & "GET" style URL encoding - help?! I have a website that features a really simple Flash movie which contains an FLV player that is driven by a Tree component, which has its entries defined by an XML file. This is all fantastic, really easy, was not that hard for me to code/design/setup by viewing a few tutorials...

However, the time has come to expand the capacity of this Media page. I need to modify the Action Script to accept a Flash Variable that is provided IN AN URL like this:

The normal page is foo.com/foo.html

I want to link to this page with an url such as foo.com/foo.html?videoPlayer=thisfile.flv

With the intended functionality being that when the page is rendered the SWF file interprets the string and performs the correct action.

You'd think this would be simple, but I cannot find suitable instructions on how to do this. I have found a thousand different solutions to encoding these flashvar calls in the OBJECT and EMBED sections of the HTML in which the SWF is rendered, but this is not what I want to do. The HTML for the page has to remain static.

It doesn't help that I'm not much of a coder, but I think I can do it with a slight shove in the right direction! Flash experts, hope me!

Flv editing/remixing?

oxala — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:03:48 -0800

I want to download a bunch of videos from Youtube and edit them together for re-uploading. I've done this a few times in the past but it was time consuming. There must be better tools out there now? In the past I was downloading the flv files, converting backwards to mpg with Riva encoder then using Windows Movie Maker to edit. This was time consuming, often didn't work properly, and the quality was very poor. I want to get back into making a few films with flv files from Youtube, are there up to date tools available? Surely someone has developed a quick and easy flv editor or some sort of plugin for Premiere? If not what are your tips/methods for doing this without too much encoding/decoding and quality loss? Google search is near futile. I have Premiere and Windows Movie Maker.

link different

progosk — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:09:32 -0800

safari's activity window does a great job of showing the .flv files an .swf on a web page will load. except sometimes it doesn't. what to do then? brightcove is pretty good at hiding the source .flv (for example of nyt videos). are there other tools/tricks (for mac osx) to find the direct link to .flv's on pages such as this one?

Free/cheap VJ software with FLV support and sound output?

Herr Fahrstuhl — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 05:28:13 -0800

Looking for free or cheap VJ software with FLV support and sound output. I have the idea to do some sort of vj-ing / movie screening live show where I would mix together videos I found on youtube and elsewhere (think "live version of TV Carnage with faster editing and more effects").

But I need the software to do this. None of the VJing tools I found on the internet have audio output, which I need. As far as the other features go, I'm not too picky - just the ability to play back FLV files, some mixing, titling and a few wipes.

My notebook is a 2GHz Pentium with 1GB running Windows XP and fortunately having an external monitor connector which can be configured to behave as extended desktop, so that I can use the LCD panel as my previewing monitor and the external output for the beamer.

Any hints on (preferably free / cheap) software or any other tips are greatly appreciated.

Memory leaks, like the corners of my Flash

dw — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:06:01 -0800

I'm struggling with Flash video. It's eating memory and crashing client browsers.... I'm trying to get videos like this one to work. Unfortunately, they're all huge (30-40 minutes long), came as Quicktime, and the powers-that-be really want 640X480 absolute best quality (for this video, that's 200MB).

My lack of knowledge of Flash, though, is showing. I've converted the Quicktime to FLV, used Flash 8 to embed it in a page (as a progressive download), and published it as a proof-of-concept. About 10-15 minutes in, though, the video crashes and takes the browser with it. It's eating memory -- Firefox goes from 100MB of memory consumption on my computer to 450MB right before the crash.

What am I doing wrong? Is it that I'm using progressive download where I should be streaming (keeping in mind that we don't have the money to buy Flash Media Server)? Should I be cutting the video up into pieces and using a playlist? Both? And? Should I switch to WMV or Real instead (or attempt to just keep it in Quicktime and find a way to stream it?)

Good FLV Players?

Firas — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:05:00 -0800

Looking for a web-based FLV player (ideally want it to approximate the youtube one.) For-pay is fine. The usage has to be just 'pass your flv url to the player and it plays' (ie. not something that requires manipulation in Macromedia Flash to work.) Any pointers? Thanks.

chop chop chop, flash video

suedehead — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:33:32 -0800

How to split a flash movie (.FLV) file? I just spent a day yesterday ripping and encoding an hour's worth of video to .flv for a client. The video itself is actually about six ten-minute segments put together. Instead of having to split the original video and re-encode everything all over again, is there any way I can split the .flv files on a mac?

I've searched everywhere and my google-fu is failing me. I have FCP 5, Quicktime Pro, and Flash 8 if that helps. Help me, AskMe!

What's the best way to deliver streaming videos of lectures to students?

pantufla — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 19:03:34 -0800

What's the most reliable, simplest, and cheapest way for my company to deliver streaming videos of lectures to students? We're looking to convert videos into digital video files, convert them to .flv, add some simple titles, and then post them somewhere to be streamed. What's the quickest workflow? Do we need to use a hosting company like VitalStream, or can we host the videos on our own server? Which solution would be cheaper? How does the red 5 open source media server compare with the Flash Media Server? Can .flv handle 30-45 minute videos without a problem? How much time & effort would it take to convert that digital video file into a streamable flv with some titles? Thanks!!

mute bg audio in FLV

grafholic — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 16:32:40 -0800

anyway to mute background audio in flash video? this is a question for a friend - he has recorded a video but the original video has some background noise that he wants to mute. how do i go about it?