HOWTO convert from Flash Video-FLV to AVI for free AKA Transcoding

This is a special request HOWTO on Transcoding. There is a soul out on the internet that wants to be able to convert Flash video (FLV) to AVI, MPEG (MPG), or WMV. For those of us out there that don't know this is called Transcoding. This is simply a matter of decoding the video to and an intermediate form and encoding the video to the chosen format.

Windows Instructions: (Linux instruction are down below)

Prerequisites for the method described below.
1. Firefox
2. The Video Downloader plugin for Firefox
3. Riva FLV Encoder 2. A free FLV encoder that can transcode as well.


The step-by-step HOWTO:

1. Pick a Flash Video to download. Click the Download Video Link.


2. Save the FLV video. Make sure to Rename it with an flv extension. It is weird that Video Downloader doesn't let us pick a name.


3. Start Riva FLV Encoder.
- Pick your FLV file or the input.
- Pick the location and name of output file
- Pick the extension you'd like to transcode into. (AVI or MPG). In my example I chose AVI.
- Press the encode button.


And there you have it, tada, you are done. When the Riva FLV Encoder 2 is complete, you've transcoded into another format.

Be aware that you might need to specifically have the codec for the AVI/MPG encoding you just did.

Reading briefly on the forum of Riva it appears that there are occasional gitches, sound problems with transcoding. It isn't a specifically supported operation, either.



Riva Links:
Riva Homepage
Riva Forums

Do you want to do this for Linux?
Take a look at this: Converting flv to mpeg in Linux
Of course you can download a flv file with Firefox in Linux

You will need ffmpeg.
And the simple commandline:
ffmpeg -i videotoconvert.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 output.mpg


Keywords: Transcoding, FLV2AVI, FLV2MPG, FLV2MPEG, Convert Flash Video to AVI or MPEG/MPG, Convert FLV to AVI, Convert FLV to MPG, Howto Convert FLV to WMV, convert youtube videos, convert google videos.