Flash Video (flv) has become the default video format on the web and almost every video sharing site uses FLV to stream videos online. And its not just the YouTube clones, even media properties like CNN have switched to Adobe Flash Video.
Other than viewing Flash videos in your browser, some of download FLV files locally to enjoy web videos offline.
Everything You Wanted to Know about Editing FLV Flash Videos
Watching videos in an FLV player is half the fun - you can do so many other things like split FLV videos into multiple clips, trim the introductory part, convert flv videos to MP3 songs, extract image frames from the video, etc. Lets get started:
Q: How to Edit FLV Videos with expensive video editors ?
There are no standalone FLV editors around but if you have Adobe AIR, I highly recommend RichFLV - a lightweight flv editor that lets you do almost everything with FLV video clips.
With RichFLV, you can split flv files by adding cue-points, join two or more FLV video clips by stitching or add new MP3 sound tracks over your existing FLV video. Perfect if you want to edit YouTube videos on the computer.
Mac users have another good option - download Perian that turns Quick Time Pro into a FLV editor.
Q. How to convert FLV videos into MP3 audio files ?
To extract audio from flv files, get the free FLV Extract utility from moitah.net - the video is saved as an MP3 file and the quality of sound in the original video is maintained as there’s no encoding done to save the audio.
Alternatively, you can extract MP3 from FLV files only using Vixy.net - an online service.
Q. Which media players can play Flash Videos on the desktop ?
To play FLV video files on the desktop, you can use Adobe Media Player, VLC Media Player or this standalone player which I think is the best flv player around for XP or Vista.
If you are on a Mac, you can play FLV videos downloaded from YouTube in your QuickTime player using the free Perian component discussed above.
Q. How to extract image frames from FLV Videos ?
You can export any image frame out of the FLV video using either the RichFLV editor or through VLC Media Player.
Open the .flv file in VLC, navigate to the frame that you want to save as an image and press Ctrl+Alt+S (or Video -> Snapshot). Note that the regular Print Screen key will not work for capturing screenshot from FLV file.
Q. Where can you upload FLV Video files on the web ?
Blip.TV - none of the other video sharing sites accept FLV format files.
Related - Why Choose Blip.TV over YouTube
Q. How to Embed FLV video clips in web pages ?
Read this guide on how to embed flv files in web pages. Alternatively, you could upload the file to Blip.TV and use the embed code provided by Blip.TV.
Q. How to Convert FLV videos to other video formats like WMV, AVI, etc ?
Use SUPER - the program may look complex at first glance but don’t worry, it’s very easy. I think it even lets you convert SWF movies into FLV videos.
Q. How to create new FLV movies files from scratch ?
VideoSpin is the only free video editing software I know of that can export movies into Flash Video format. An alternate trick is export your video into Windows Media or AVI and convert it into FLV using a converter program like SUPER .
For more tips and tricks regarding YouTube and Google Videos, check our previous guide on Interesting Things to Do with YouTube Videos.
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