Talk:Flash Video/Archive 1

Is FLV an open standard?
Somebody should mention explicitly that this is NOT an open standard and also point to sources to translate a FLV video to some other format. (I would do it myself if I just knew about it, but I learned about FLV just today) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.190.135.150 (talk • contribs) 18:40, 16 January 2006


 * It is mostly open. H.263 is open, and recent ffmpeg can decode VP6 and screen codec.  You can convert FLV to other formats using ffmpeg, mencoder, VLC media player and several other programs.


 * FYI : Media Player Classic can play .flv files with Satsuki Decoder Pack (during install, look at video codec and check FLV1). I think it uses ffmpeg, ffdshow and vp6 codecs.


 * Could you tell me the exact file names please? So I can use them with the real WMP11--Coolkid602006 01:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

A good flv player (os x)?
I've tried vlc and mplayer, which both won't allow me to fast-forward or reverse through a flv file ("main: INPUT_CONTROL_SET_TIME(_OFFSET) 17393000 failed"). I know this isn't the best place to ask, but can somebody pinpoint me to a *good* flv player for the mac? Thanks! :-) Sergeyy 23:41, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Yea i noe. wenever u try to fast forward or sumfin, the video just stops.

Riva have a player and an encoder which allows some variability, but probably not all you want.


 * Nope, unfortunately not, but thanks. Sergeyy 08:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You might want to try Perian. It works for all the FLV videos I've tried. Caffeinepuppy 09:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that you should take a look at www.fidyo.com


 * Got English version? E. Sn0 = 31337 = Talk 22:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

i use Applian FLV Player. you can fast forward and rewind and everything. you can also use video smoothing wen scaling but its a little cpu intensive. TranscendantX (talk) 01:38, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

External Links section needs revision
There needs to be new catagory for programs that convert both ways, such as Riva. Currently, they are listed in a way that makes it seem as if they have only one function, but some of the programs can do both flv->video and video->flv. I've put a small note there untill someone does this revision, since I can't research each program at this time. TheRaven7 14:16, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Riva is just a front-end to ffmpeg, so the format support is presumably the same. The list is getting a little cluttered, and I think it could be trimmed down a bit. -- Mcoder 00:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

There are some tutorials on creating flash flv players. http://www.wowebmaster.com/flash/2009/flash-video-player-tutorial/ http://www.layersmagazine.com/flash-custom-videoplayer.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gulerse (talk • contribs) 22:15, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

External Links - Screencast
FLV is a complex & confusing category, plus it is changing rapidly. I think we can add value by describing the various tools better & categorizing them. Added Flash Media Players + Open Source Flash sections to External links and 'See Also' ref to Screencast -HTH Awildman 23:30, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

vixy.net's FLV Lossless Converter
Kudos to whoever put this brilliant link on this page! I love you. --Jayshoo 10:48, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

HTTP streaming
82.73.24.196 has repeatedly made a distinction between HTTP "progressive download" and "streaming", on the basis of "allowing random access". Random access is possible in HTTP via the range request-header, so I don't see the difference. It's just HTTP. So unless you have some reasonable explanation of the difference, I'm going to remove these comments and just list HTTP. -- Mcoder 02:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

+ FMS can also stream via HTTP port 80 to bypass RTMP blocks on firewalls. In this case the RTMP is tunneled within HTTP. But there's still a difference between progressive download (no server-client interaction) and streaming (both via HTTP or RTMP).


 * Ok, but wouldn't that be RTMP-in-HTTP, rather than "HTTP streaming"? To me, HTTP streaming just means you send an HTTP header and get back a stream of data, which is exactly the same thing as progressive download.  That's just the way HTTP works. -- Mcoder 02:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I was confused by this section as well, I tried to clarify HTTP streaming. AFAIK, HTTP streaming doesn't tunnel RTMP, it just uses the byte range functionality defined in RFC 2616 14.35. Oasisbob 22:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The assertion that HTTP streaming uses the byte range functionality of HTTP is incorrect. It is impossible to instruct the netstream object in flash to pass the necessary HTTP client headers to the server for this to work. HTTP streaming in Flash 8 and 9 uses a special server-side process that reads the desired offset into the flv file out of a get or post request and not the byte range header. For verification of this, please review the source code for the apache, lighttpd and php scripts that enable this functionality. I would recommend that the text "using the partial download functionality of HTTP" be replaced with "using a server-side process" for the sake of technical accuracy. anonymous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.56.11 (talk) 18:14, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

FLV Converter section
FLV CONVERTER SECTION GONE!!! ''' Why do you remove useful links that I put on this page? are you trying to destroy this page / or you just don't know anything about the importance of those links!'''

''>>guys, you weren't supposed to delete the FLV Encoder section!!!<< how do we put it back now!! it took me a few weeks to find all those links and test some of those programs!This is unacceptable! You ruined this page!!'' —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.12.29.161 (talk)

FLV CONVERTER SECTION-Link >>Please do not delete the FLV Converter link section. It's a great source of info for those who are looking for a good converter. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.12.29.216 (talk)


 * Could you restore the FLV converter apps /link section please.


 * I've put it back up. If anyone feels that there should be a reason to delete this section please say so.--Coolkid602006 01:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Please do not re-add the converter section. It is not appropriate for wikipedia. See WP:NOT and WP:EL. This has been discussed to death, and the policy is very clear. Oasisbob 21:56, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

== I give up =='' guys, I give up, there are a couple of people who are trying to ruin this page. they don't know the importance of those links, don't have enough info on FLV and keep modifying the page. it's really shameful.''' we should all contact Wiki and ask them to lock this page for a while, till we decide what needs to be added to this page!!!'''

Probably someone from Adobe who keeps taking down the links to the other converters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.216.208.20 (talk) 23:56, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Software Spam
People keep trying to spam software references to this article. I don't think this is appropriate. Please compare the amount of software references in other file format articles like HTML and MP3 to this one. Oasisbob 23:14, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * If people keep trying it (obviously not the same person repeatedly) that should be a big clue that perhaps it is expected to be in the article and therefor necessary. You just compared it to two of the most popular and best supported formats around! Obviously a list of software for those applications would be nigh endless. FLV software on the other hand is rare and sought after. The links that I know of don't fall in the category "spam" either, just because they link to software doesn't make them spam. I find it hard to believe this is all part of some linkbuilding scheme by some mischievous SEO. That said, it shouldn't be an exhaustive list (because that would qualify as spamming by quantity).
 * In reference to all discussion above I would like to point out that, to my knowledge, there is no policy that defines all links to (commercial) software as spam. I have 2 suggestions to improve the article and make everyone happy :
 * 1) Every link that is added should be motivated on the talk page and reviewed by others to determine if it is indeed link spam. It is important to differentiate between spam and a genuinely useful link, I'm all too aware of that as I have strong dislike for the filth that infests my mailbox daily, as well messageboards on my own websites for example. Simply weeding out all links because you don't want to be a list of all commercial software is just too coarse. Due to the demand for the links alone I would argue that the article is more informative when they are included.
 * 2) These circumstances should be explained in the article itself, making it obvious to anyone why this file format does contain links to software to work with it. The circumstances being that it is widely used on websites to display videos, even though there is actually very little standalone software available. This is remarkable because usually you need to build wide support to make something succesful, whereas this format is popular exactly because it is hard to use offline (and easy to integrate in websites obviously).
 * Finally, if you really really can't help yourself and must remove something, I suggest hunting some pokemon lifecycle descriptions or something else that is far less useful ;).
 * I would make changes to the article myself, but I don't have time to do proper reference hunting and the people who made the changes earlier are more knowledgeable on the details than me no doubt, so I will leave it here as a suggestion. --Rygir 05:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Links added about the actual format
I just added two links which are not software spam ;-) but are actual links about the internal details of the format. There are a few more such pages - if we can get enough they may be enough to write a section that actually details the format in a referenceable fashion without assuming the reader has licensed access to Adobe format spec documents - David Gerard 21:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I also took off the link to Flash in general - the Adobe Devnet page on Flash and the specification licensing page should cover it from the official end of things - David Gerard 22:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Nice find. I agree that more concrete information about the format would be useful. Oasisbob 23:54, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

List of FLV software
- imo would be useful.

Like this: List of PDF software

Hakluyt bean 22:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Now there's two headings for free software? dachshund2k3 (talk) 23:34, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Overly zealous removal of useful information
Example : StroboScope server of www.jet-stream.nl (Netherlands), the PHP FLV streaming Player of www.rich-media-project.com (France), and Streamlike players all make use of HTTP streaming. An open source FLV metadata injector is made available by Buraks

was changed to : For example, Google Video supports progressive download and can seek to any part of the video before buffering is complete, whereas YouTube cannot.

with the following reason given : cleaned up progressive download description, removed commercial links in favor of a more clear example. (Revision as of 19:56, 23 December 2006 )

Now please, explain to me how YouTube and Google Video are good replacements for commercial links, as they are commercial links themselves. Just because you don't have to pay by credit card to Google doesn't make it a non-profit organization. In fact, you even removed an open source reference! If your intent is to minimize references to commercial products then this whole page is pointless, as FLV is a commercial product. Instead, refrain making edits biased towards the most popular solutions and clean up the links that are there, by merit of the content those links refer to. That said, I like what was added, I just don't believe the reasoning behind the removal of the links that were there was entirely justified. --Rygir 06:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * While the reasoning may have been somewhat misleading, I think the channge was justified. The change removed external links to apparently non-noteable websites. In general, we should always favour notable websites over non-noteable ones and not use external links to justify the mentioning of a non-noteable website (or programs or whatever). Mentioning non-noteable things, particularly with external links comes very close to advertising which is not necessarily so with noteable things Nil Einne (talk) 18:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Windows Explorer Thumbnails
Is there a method to display FLV files with thumbnails of the file contents, instead of an icon of the .FLV format, at least in "thumbnail view"?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ace Frahm (talk • contribs) 04:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

Google Video
Isn't Google Video the same thing as YouTube now? Douglas A. Whitfield 17:37, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Google purchased YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/t/about). Google Video now searches YouTube, but they are still run as separate sites. You can't sign into Google with a YouTube account, for example. CoJaBo 17:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Video to Flash
The first video to flash application came out on December 2000 (see: www.geocities.com/vid2swf). Back then people simply converted video files (AVI, MPG, MOV) to SWF. With time, Macromedia realized that people would be happy to view video content in their flash player rather than fight the format war between Microsoft(ASF, WMV), RealNetworks and Quicktime(QT, Mov), and came out with FLV. By pushing it through their automatic update mechanism, they managed to take over this market almost completely.

What About Macromedia?
Under the entry for "flash player" it reads "The Adobe Flash Player is a multimedia and application player created and distributed by Adobe Systems." stating adobe created flash is patently incorrect and should be corrected.
 * Yep. You're right.  I changed "created" to "developed" since they are the current developers.  ~a (user • talk • contribs) 03:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Instructions on How to Join FLV Files?
I can't find anywhere to else to ask.. does anyone know how to join FLV files? There doesn't seem to be a free software that does this. Hubert Shiau, AIM: hmshiau 00:25, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * AVIDEMUX, a free and open source video editor will read and write FLV container files. You can append files, one at a time, to an already opened initial file, and then save the resultant FLV file (with 2, 3, or more clips joined) with a new name. There are versions of Avidemux for Linux, Windows, MAC OS, and a few others. — Becksguy (talk) 03:04, 30 January 2008 (UTC)