Ask YC: Convert Video To FLV With H.264

[jasonlbaptiste]

Correct me if im just being a moron here:

a) The video is recorded in 1280x720 and made a mov b) I want to convert that .mov to a h264 HD FLV

I know flash 9 started supporting this. How do I convert the .mov to a h264 flv (HD). This is for a bunch of demo videos and quality really matters.

[aristus]

Short answer, just try to play the .mov file in Flash.

Long answer: Flash 9 Beta 3 added limited support for the MP4 file format (or "container") and the H.264 video encoding. The FLV container format does not and will never be able to contain H.264 data.

MP4 is an ISO standard -- before that it was known as "QuickTime" aka ".mov". Yay! But MP4/.mov/QuickTime has very little to do with the actual video and audio encoding it contains. Your .mov file, which is an MP4-compliant container, may have video data in lots of different encoding formats, tracks, cover art, meta data, etc etc. Boo!

Flash 9b3 supports only MP4 files with a single video/audio trak, and only moov atoms containing H.264 data. The file extension does not matter; it inspects the magic bits inside the file.

There is not at the moment a cheap open-source way to stream these files. MP4 is an odd format: all frame metadata, usually about 2% of the total file size, is in the front of the file and MUST be fully downloaded & decoded before a video will start playing. Adobe is very aware of this and will gladly sell you expensive server software to stream H.264 video. :(

[wmf → aristus]

MP4 is an odd format: all frame metadata, usually about 2% of the total file size, is in the front of the file and MUST be fully downloaded & decoded before a video will start playing.

Actually that sounds quite convenient for seeking.

Also, http://code.google.com/p/rubyizumi/

[aarontait]

Get QuickTime Pro (totally worth the money). Go to File->Export. For the format, select QuickTime Movie. Open the options window. Under video, click settings... and choose H.264 as the compression type. Adjust the quality settings for your taste. For sound, use AAC and select a quality level that you feel comfortable with. IMPORTANT! CHECK PREPARE FOR INTERNET STREAMING and select "Fast Start". This places the MOOV atom at the beginning of the file so the entire thing doesn't have to download before it plays. And viola, you have H.264 video that is playable in Flash. If you want, you can just change the file extension to .mp4. Sometime Flash doesn't like it when you use a relative link to the video file. Use an absolute web link to the video file if you are having issues. If you want a super easy was to play back these files, be sure to check out the open source FLV media player:http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player

[aaroneous]

For better playback on older (>2 years) computers you're better off using the VP6 or VP6-S codecs over H.264 and Flash. If you choose VP6 your video will also play on client computers that have older versions of the Flash player.

FFmpeg or Mencoder are great OSS projects for converting video, and as someone already mentioned ffmpegx is a good front to ffmpeg on osx.

There is a new FLV file format spec in the works, but for now Adobe recommends your h.264 stay in MPEG-4 containers (mp4, mov, 3g2, etc).

[lyime]

The video doesn't have to be in FLV format. Why do you want the video to be in that format? You can use a flash player to play a h264 MP4 video file.

[markbao]

ffmpegX. http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

Give that a shot.