Videos that are downloaded from sites like Youtube usually use the flv file extension. One of the easiest ways to join flv videos is with the help of the software program FLV Joiner. The portable software accepts multiple flv videos that can be added to the software’s interface.

The program sorts the video automatically by the time they have been added to the application but provides options to manually sort them to bring them in sequence if necessary. It will display information about the flv videos that have been added including audio and video codec used, playtime and name. The total size and playtime of all flv videos in the queue is also displayed.

A click on the Join button will join all flv videos in the queue in the exact sequence that they are shown. The output is a single flv file that contains all the videos of the queue. The main advantage of this program over other software solutions is the simplicity. It cannot get easier than this. The developer should however consider adding the mp4 format in the near future to the program to provide the same video joining functionality for hd videos that are downloaded from those popular video hosting websites.

FLV Joiner is a free software for the Windows operating system that is available for download at the developer’s website.

I prefer to join those flv videos again if I happen to download the videos from Youtube. It simply means a better viewing experience because I’m able to watch it without having to click on the next part every ten minutes or add all videos to a playlist before starting the playback.

The easiest way to join flv videos is to use a software called Avidemux. With Avidemux you open the first part of the video and select Append from the file menu and select all additional parts of the video this way. They will simply get appended to the previous part(s) and you can use the Save video function to save the joined video which contains all parts.

A good indicator that a part was added is to look at the playtime of the video which should increase by about ten minutes for every part that you add to it. The video is saved again as a flv files and the procedure does not take longer than a few seconds if you save them as flv as well.

You could also convert them to avi for instance by assigning the avi file extension to the filename that you want to save.

Now that everything is installed go to Youtube and search for music that you like. Good starting points if you do not know exactly what you are looking for are the top 100 single charts of the United States or the Top 40 singles of the UK. Other options are Amazon or other CD online shops. What I do then is visit Youtube and either enter the artist’s name or song in the search box. This should be enough to find the song that you are looking for, you sometimes have to sort the results by date instead of relevancy to find what you are looking for.

Number one song is Basshunter with NOW YOU’RE GONE in the UK. A search for Basshunter on Youtube revealed the video Basshunter Now You’re Gone.

I save the video with the flv extension. Now I need to use FLV Extract which I have installed earlier. I only check Audio in the interface and drag and drop the saved Youtube video into it. The result is a mp3 audio file. I can already play the audio file and add it to my mp3 player or mobile phone.

Playback starts automatically and I can check that the quality is good enough.

Some mobile phones can already use this mp3 file as a ringtone, some prefer a 30 second version of it. We will now use Audacity to create a 30 second version of the audio file. Load the mp3 into Audacity, you see a graphical representation of it in Audacity shortly thereafter.

Editing a audio file with Audacity is very easy. Check the timeline on top of the audio stream. Left-Click at the 30 seconds position and drag the mouse to the end of the audio file. Now press delete to remove that part which leaves us with a 30 second sample of the song by Basshunter.

You can also cut in the middle or use the end instead if you like to use that part as the ringtone. Not a problem with audacity. Click on File > Export as MP3 and save the file again. Congratulations, you have created a 30 second ringtone.

FLV videos have to be transcoded into the AVI or MPG format to be able to play them on standalone players or burn them to DVD. Thanks to Alter Falter (German blog) I discovered a software that can transcode several flv files at once into AVI or MPG files. The software is called Pazera Free FLV to AVI Converter. It does not have to be installed at all, just unpack it to your system and start the executable.

Click on Add files to add as many flv videos as you like, they will be processed one after the other once you select the output format and click on Convert. The options are to create AVI or MPG files from the flv files. Converting them to MPG is the easier way, you just select a general quality level VCD, SVCD, DVD or Custom and if you want the videos in PAL or NTSC.

If you want to convert them to AVI you have to select an appropriate video codec and change the Auto settings for better results. Stefan suggests to use a bitrate of 1500 instead of Auto but I guess you have to play around with those settings a little bit to find the best options for your preference.

What I really like is that the whole process is uncomplicated. Add files, select output format, click on Convert. That’s all there is to do.

DVD Flick is a powerful DVD authoring software which is able to automatically create a DVD from various video formats such as apple quicktime, divx, flash video and mpeg. There is no need to convert them into a DVD compliant format, just load them into DVD Flick and it will do the rest for you. All that needs to be done after DVD Flick finished generating the files is to burn them.

You should take a look at the projects settings before proceeding to generate the DVD. You may select a different target size such as CD, DVD-Ram or Mini-DVD, change the target format between PAL and NTSC and change the quality of the encoding process. A better quality or a second pass results in a longer generation time but also in a better video and audio quality.

You may select the audio format and bitrate and opt to generate a iso file instead of a video_ts folder. It is also possible to burn the new DVD right after the generation finishes.

The only thing that is really missing is the missing menu feature. There is no way to create a menu at this moment which means all files are played in a row which could get confusing if you have many small movies on a DVD.

Vdownloader is a little freeware program that scans your clipboard for links to youtube, google video, grinvi and dailymotion. Once it detects such a link the movie will be automatically downloaded and converted to the format that you specified in the settings. You may save the video as avi, mpg or psp and change the output size and audio bitrate in the process.

Converting youtube videos did not take long at all. A 2 minute video was downloaded and converted in about 2-3 minutes to mpg. I was trying the same on dailymotion and it was working fluent as well. It takes a little bit longer to convert larger videos of course but it still the fastest way that I know of. It is basically a one click download and conversion program.

The Riva FLV Encoder helps us to convert the downloaded flv files into avi, mpg, quicktime or wmv files. All you need to do is add a local input file (flv in this case) and select an output format by adding the extension to the file. If you want an avi file you simply name it video.avi in the form destination video file.

You may change additional parameters like movie size, bitrate, framerate and audio if you like. Please note that the results will not be good if you choose to increase the movie size for instance. Hitting Encode will start the process. Once that is finished you may preview the result and try again if you do not like the result.