Convert .flv (Google Videos) to .mpg using ffmpeg
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ffmpeg Features
- ffmpeg is a command line tool to convert one video file format to another. It also supports grabbing and encoding in real time from a TV card.
- ffserver is an HTTP (RTSP is being developped) multimedia streaming server for live broadcasts. Time shifting of live broadcast is also supported.
- ffplay is a simple media player based on SDL and on the FFmpeg libraries.
- libavcodec is a library containing all the FFmpeg audio/video encoders and decoders. Most codecs were developped from scratch to ensure best performances and high code reusability.
- libavformat is a library containing parsers and generators for all common audio/video formats.
Install ffmpeg Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
convert .flv to .mpg using ffmpeg
First you need to download your .flv file to a folder and you need to Open a terminal window and go in to the .flv file folder and type the following command
ffmpeg -i jokes.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320×240 jokes.mpg
jokes.flv is the file you want to convert, so the name must be the same as the source file.You can name jokes.mpg whatever you want as long as it has the .mpg extension.
-b bitrate: set the video bitrate in kbit/s (default = 200 kb/s)
-ab bitrate: set the audio bitrate in kbit/s (default = 64)
-ar sample rate: set the audio samplerate in Hz (default = 44100 Hz)
-s size: set frame size. The format is WxH (default 160×128 )
Great!
Thanks very much for your effort!
Greetz 😉
if the video is available on the Google Video site you just need to click on the “Download” button, cancel the download of the Google video player then in the bit of the sidebar that has just expanded click on the “Manually download the video” link. Save the file then open it with a text editing program such as notepad or Gedit. Once open look for the section of text starting “url:http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload” copy everything after the “url:” up to just before “docid:” and paste it into firefox (may work with other browsers but I have only tested this with firefox) and save the .AVI file when it asks you to.
Given that FLV plays fine in ffmpeg-based media players (more or less all media players) — what’s the point in making MPEGs from them? Well, OK, if you really want to make a VCD of them, right. But then you’d have to use other encoding parameters. Also, I don’t see any point in scaling the small video to a larger size before encoding. That just introduces some extra quality loss for a fixed bandwith.
BTW: With more or less any flash-based embedded video player, you can “pause” the video, wait until it is completely downloaded (since FLV media is *not* real-time streaming data) and then have a look in either /tmp (most Flash video players) or the Browser cache directory (e.g. the MySpace FLV player). The FLV is waiting there to get copied 🙂 No need for “download” links which in most cases offer only quality-reduced versions for mobile phones anyway.
Thanks
very nice
i have ffmpeg and i used a guide when i firstr found it the command i used was something like ffmpeg -ie get.flv get.wma and it worked the only pproblem is i forgot the command and i need to make mp3 files for my song colection…
thanks
Can i convert wma to flash with ffmpeg for windows?
convert .flv to .mpg using ffmpeg
nice work
good work man 🙂
Seems that to convert to VCD format you just have to:
ffmpeg -i input.flv -f vcd output.mpg
Can i convert wma to flash with ffmpeg for windows?
yeaha
thank you
very nice
its good job
Thank you very much ,,
appreciate it ,,,,,,,,
Thank you very much
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Thanks for sharing this useful info … regards
Thanks for sharing but its useless again bunch of files which is most likely to be the case when downloading a few clips and wanna batch them in to one job.
For bunch of files in a folder you can do this
for file in `file -1`; do `ffmpeg -i $file -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320×240 $file.mpg`; done
can i convert rmvb to mpeg?
i wont search if i can, ubuntu is the best.
thank you.
use..
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i “/home/me/film.avi” -vcodec flv -f flv -r 29.97 -s 320×240 -aspect 4:3 -b 300kb -g 160 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -mbd 2 -flags +aic+cbp+mv0+mv4+trell -ac 1 -ar 22050 -ab 56k “/home/me/film.flv”
..or..
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i “/home/me/film.avi” -vcodec flv -f flv -r 29.97 -s 320×180 -aspect 16:9 -b 300kb -g 160 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -mbd 2 -flags +aic+cbp+mv0+mv4+trell -ac 1 -ar 22050 -ab 56k “/home/me/film.flv”
😉
have fun
And backwards..
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i “/home/me/film.flv” -target ntsc-dvd -r 29.97 -s 720×480 -aspect 4:3 -b 8000k -mbd rd -flags +trell -mv0 -cmp -subcmp 2 “/home/me/film.mpg”
..or..
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i “/home/me/film.flv” -target ntsc-dvd -r 29.97 -s 720×480 -aspect 16:9 -b 8000k -g 12 -mbd rd -flags +trell -mv0 -cmp -subcmp 2 “/home/me/film.mpg”
I use my step 1 to convert using ffmpeg. I use 2-4 to put it on a dvd for later viewing.
1) Convert any file format (including flv) to mpeg4 format
ffmpeg -i video.avi -target ntsc-dvd -aspect 4:3 output.mpg
2) Convert mpeg4 to dvd format with 15 minute chapters
dvdauthor -o dvd.movie -t -c 0,15:00,30:00,45:00,1:00:00,1:15:00,1:30:00,1:45:00 output.mpg
3) Close out the dvdproject
dvdauthor -o dvd.movie/ -T
4) Burn to dvd media with k3b
I’ll have to look into the streaming aspects of ffmpeg. Currently using vlc from the command line to perform this and works pretty darn good.
Thank you very much ,,
There is a front end to ffmpeg that makes this easier.
http://code.google.com/p/winff/
Why not use vlc player to convert: open file->advanced alternatives: ettings->chose file and /home/you/vlcoutput.mpeg–>mark videocodec and soundcodec (leave default settings i you want) and then just hit OK twice.
sit back and whait for a wild and the convertion is finished 🙂
Kind Regards \\m
For reference:
With a 13 meg flv input file.
ffmpeg -i jokes.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320×240 jokes.mpg results in a 13 meg file that losses a LOT of quality. (BTW, my version of ffmpeg complains on the b parameter. “WARNING: The bitrate parameter is set too low. It takes bits/s as argument, not kbits/s” it should probably be 16)
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i “/home/me/film.flv” -target ntsc-dvd -r 29.97 -s 720×480 -aspect 4:3 -b 8000k -mbd rd -flags +trell -mv0 -cmp -subcmp 2 “/home/me/film.mpg” results in a 184M file. (although the quality was almost BETTER than the flv which is kinda unexplainable) (note, I had to remove -flags +trell on windows because the windows binary of ffmpeg didn’t support the -flags parameter)
Using vlc media player’s stream output option was quicker and resulted in a 45M file that was pretty much an exact copy of the original.
Might be useful to someone else to know before hand. Thanks to all for there multiple methods skinning said cat.
i have a error message after convert my flv video to mpg ..
anybody can help me??
root@heru-laptop:/media/data_/baru_/Downloads/Video# ffmpeg -i 40745412.flv -b 39 -ab 22050 -b 500 -s 160×120 jokes.mpg
FFmpeg version r11872+debian_3:0.svn20080206-12ubuntu3, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-pp –enable-swscaler –enable-x11grab –prefix=/usr –enable-libgsm –enable-libtheora –enable-libvorbis –enable-pthreads –disable-strip –enable-libfaad –enable-libfaadbin –enable-liba52 –enable-liba52bin –enable-libdc1394 –disable-armv5te –disable-armv6 –disable-altivec –disable-vis –enable-shared –disable-static
libavutil version: 49.6.0
libavcodec version: 51.50.0
libavformat version: 52.7.0
libavdevice version: 52.0.0
built on Oct 3 2008 22:40:31, gcc: 4.3.2
Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 1000.00 (1000/1) -> 15.00 (15/1)
Input #0, flv, from ‘40745412.flv’:
Duration: 10:04:46.5, start: 1320.000000, bitrate: 39 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: flv, yuv420p, 160×120 [PAR 0:1 DAR 0:1], 15.00 tb(r)
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 22050 Hz, stereo, 40 kb/s
WARNING: The bitrate parameter is set too low. It takes bits/s as argument, not kbits/s
WARNING: The bitrate parameter is set too low. It takes bits/s as argument, not kbits/s
File ‘jokes.mpg’ already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N] y
Output #0, mpeg, to ‘jokes.mpg’:
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg1video, yuv420p, 160×120 [PAR 0:1 DAR 0:1], q=2-31, 0 kb/s, 15.00 tb(c)
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp2, 22050 Hz, stereo, 22 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
[mpeg1video @ 0xb7d5a2f0]MPEG1/2 does not support 15/1 fps
Error while opening codec for output stream #0.0 – maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
I somehow can’t convert those damn new 16:9 FLVs youtube uses now….damn them….(-;
Hi!
Just an FYI, -b and -ab set the bitrate by bytes per second, not kb. Therefore multiply the supplied values by 1024.
I noticed somebody above got the same error. The easiest fix is the delete the settings supplied above and use the defaults.
I need to get the video in the same quality of input file after video conversion and the size of the converted file near or same to the input file.
Can anyone help me please?, I lost more time in this.
This is the code I used for conversion
exec(“../ffmpeg -i 1.mov -sameq -f flv -vcodec flv -b 400kb -s 614×400 -qmin 1 -qmax 31 -acodec libmp3lame -ar 22050 -ac 1 1.flv”);
After conversion quality of the video is ok, but the size of the flv file (1.flv) converted is large in size.
If I remove the -sameq from the above syntax , problem of huge size of converted flv file
(1.flv) will solve , then the quality of the video is poor.