gHacks technology news » flv http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:56:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 How to join flv videos http://www.ghacks.net/2008/02/21/how-to-join-flv-videos/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/02/21/how-to-join-flv-videos/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:43:48 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/02/21/how-to-join-flv-videos/ Several video portals on the Internet have restrictions in place that prevent videos about a certain file size or length to be uploaded to their website. The normal limit is 100 Megabyte per file and a maximum length of ten minutes. Video uploaders create several parts of videos that are larger or last longer than the default limits – I came upon videos with ten and more parts on Youtube.

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.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/02/21/how-to-join-flv-videos/feed/ 17 Create Ringtones with Audacity and Youtube http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/21/create-ringtones-with-audacity-and-youtube/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/21/create-ringtones-with-audacity-and-youtube/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:55:03 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/21/create-ringtones-with-audacity-and-youtube/ It is possible to create ringtones from any song you like with free tools. Yes, that’s right, you don’t have to pay a dime for software, the music or the ringtone. All you need is some time and patience. You do need several utilities to create the ringtones: Audacity, the Lame Encoder if you do not have it installed already, FLV Extract, a browser and a video downloader. I suggest using Firefox and the excellent Download Helper extension. Install everything, look at the Download Helper article that I wrote a few weeks ago if you have troubles installing the Firefox add-on.

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.

basshunter youtube

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.

flv extract

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

download youtube video

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.

audacity

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.

audacity

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.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/21/create-ringtones-with-audacity-and-youtube/feed/ 12 Batch Convert FLV to AVI or MPG http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/30/batch-convert-flv-to-avi-or-mpg/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/30/batch-convert-flv-to-avi-or-mpg/#comments Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:14:04 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/30/batch-convert-flv-to-avi-or-mpg/ Most video portals on the Internet use the flv – that’s Flash Video – format to stream videos to their users. While Flash Video has several advantages over many other video formats when it comes to streaming it on a website it does have some severe disadvantages when it comes to playing those videos on a computer and even more so on a DVD player.

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.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/12/30/batch-convert-flv-to-avi-or-mpg/feed/ 7 Create Custom DVD`s with DVD Flick http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/19/create-custom-dvds-with-dvd-flick/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/19/create-custom-dvds-with-dvd-flick/#comments Fri, 19 Jan 2007 06:59:35 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/19/create-custom-dvds-with-dvd-flick/ When I’m looking at my video collection I see different formats, file sizes, resolutions, bitrates, audio formats and codecs. It normally takes some time to create a DVD from this mess. What would you do if you wanted to create a DVD from various .mov, .avi and .mpg files ? Convert them, load them into a program that is able to create DVD`s and burn them afterwards ? How much time would that take, what would you say ?

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.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/19/create-custom-dvds-with-dvd-flick/feed/ 11 Download and Convert Youtube movies in one step http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/06/download-and-convert-youtube-movies-in-one-step/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/06/download-and-convert-youtube-movies-in-one-step/#comments Sat, 06 Jan 2007 08:14:55 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/06/download-and-convert-youtube-movies-in-one-step/ Not long ago I wrote an article about converting flv files which are used by Youtube and Google Video to another format like avi and mpg to be able to watch them on your computer without the need of using a flv player or plugin. Fastdump pointed out in the comments that the program VDownloader would do the same faster and easier, what can I say – he was right.

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.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/01/06/download-and-convert-youtube-movies-in-one-step/feed/ 16 Convert Youtube Video Files to Avi http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/14/convert-youtube-video-files-to-avi/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/14/convert-youtube-video-files-to-avi/#comments Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:04:24 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/14/convert-youtube-video-files-to-avi/ Youtube and Google Video use the format flv, flash video, to stream the videos on their websites. If you download them using a firefox extension such as Video Downloader you might have problems playing them in your normal video player. One option would be to use a player that supports flv files such as the FLV Player. A better solution would be in my opinion to convert the flv files into avi or mpg which are widely supported and can be send to friends or burned on DVD easier.

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.

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