How to convert .FLV(Flash) to .WMV, .AVI or any other format?
If you are new here, Subscribe to Full Feeds or by Email or follow us in Twitter and receive free daily updates on Office and Windows Tips, Tricks and Tweaks..
In my last post on ‘How to Download Video, not just from YouTube?, I mentioned that the downloaded file will be in .flv format (Flash). I also gave links to some of the free FLV players. But, if you want to use that downloaded video in another or friends computer which doesn’t have FLV player then every time you have to install FLV player in all computers.
But it’s possible to convert FLV files to WMV, AVI or any other format you prefer and it’s easier than you think. The best part is you might already have that software installed in your computer.
So, How to convert FLV to WMV, AVI or any other format?
VLC player is one of the software which is widely used and which plays any format of audio or video (including .flv). The less known fact is that it also helps to convert audio and video file formats. Follow these steps to convert .flv to .wmv, .avi or any other format.
Note: If you don’t have VLC player yet, then you can download from VideoLan. It’s an open source!
Step 1: Load the .flv file into VLC player and press Stop. (If you are using large file then it may take some time to load, so wait till the whole file is loaded and then press stop. Otherwise you may not be able to transcode the full file)
Step 2: Go to File -> Wizard. It will give you a pop-up ‘Streaming/Transcoding Wizard‘.
Step 3: Select Transcode/Save to file and Click Next.
Step 4: Select Exisiting Playlist Item and the file you have just loaded will be listed there.
Step 5: Highlight the .flv file and click Next.
Step 6: In the next screen, Select Transcode Video and from the drop down box choose WMV3 (this has highest quality, though the output of the file may differ as per the original .flv file). If you are having problem with WMV3, try using WMV2.
Step 7: Select Transcode Audio and from the drop down box choose MP3 (for the quality to be higher, leave it at the default bitrate of 192) and click Next.
Step 8: choose ‘ASF‘ as the ‘Encapsulation Format‘ and click Next.
Step 9: You will be asked to select the file to save to, click ‘Choose‘ and browse to the folder where you want your new file to be saved.
Step 10: !!!Important!!! Type in the file name in the ‘File’ field with the extension of .WMV (example, lytebyte.wmv)
Step 11: Click Finish and wait for couple of seconds and the new file is ready.
Step 12: Use the new .WMV file in any player!
Earlier Update: In case if you are not able to transcode the full file, it may be because the file was not fully loaded before it was transcoded. Read Step 1 or this comment for more.
Or if you are facing some green garbage video for first few seconds, try using wmv2 instead of wmv3. Thanks Shawanta for this tip and MoYaKa for confirming it.
Update [Jan 11, 2009] Also, some have reported some changes in the new version of VLC. See Paul’s comments on how to convert using new VLC versions. Thanks Paul and Karl for confirming it.
Earlier Note: VLC has not yet released the new version for Vista but it works for most of the cases except for some rare extension types. Find out ‘How to make VLC player work in Vista?‘
If you are reading this post then you are probably downloading videos from internet. Use this new easiest method to download online videos using real player, read more on “How to Download Youtube and Other Online Videos using Real Player?“
[...] How to convert .FLV(Flash) to .WMV, .AVI or any other format? [...]
Paul, i followed your steps and when i convert after the conversion is compleate (i think), once i play the video it goes on for like half a second and stops. Did the conversion not compleate? if it didnt tell me how i know when its compleate.
I am using vista btw
Hi, I just converted some UTUBE Music FLV video files to MPG4 format which allowed me to play it using Windows Media Player. What I would to do is convert just the audio portion of these files to put on an IPOD? If that can be done. Any info is appreciated.
After i convert the .flv to .wmv and play it in Windows Media Player, it has a time span of 0 seconds. Any help with this at all?
It totaly failed k i downloaded VLC media player and i played the video on it and itwas alright but after that i diddnt see any file>wizard or anythnig and mine looks liek a player not the picture u have there lol waht am i doing wrong?
hoooo! thank-x…
Okay, I followed the instructions to the letter. First it insisted on saving as .wmv, File something or other (I’m not the most tech-savvy person around). Now it insists on playing as a rather narrow, horizontally compressed version of itself.
How do I fix this?
agreein with penguin here, these screen shots above do not look like anything on the player i downloaded-altho it deinitly is the VLC player???
i did what the steps said and it worked but for some reason there was no audio
It worked for me, but on the first try it didn’t work, it only went for 2 secs then the video discarded. i think you have to try twice and have the settings precise and fiddle with the video formats.
oh i was looking for something like this. will give it a try
thanks
i wanna convert video to .flv for my blog ,Any website or tool can be competent for this ? Thanks …
in addition, a friend recommended me WS video to flash encoder and said this tool is the best but i need to pay for it …Any info ?
give me a software that can be used to download a video directly from yuotube or another
I don’t get it, it worked but it has like 17 seconds and it’s mute and has no pic, please help me.
Hi
Thanx for sharing the notes. This really helped me in converting .flv files to .wmv. However, a problem that I have been running into is pixelization. When I compare the orginal .flv file with .wmv file, I see severe degradation in video quality. How can I make sure that the quality doesn’t suffer much?
Thanx,
There is no File menu on my VLC player.What version did you use.I used 09.8
Hi, this sounds great, the problem is I cannot get anything to play at all after converting in either VLC or WMP. I am trying to convert small music videos (5 mins or so) from YouTube but they just won’t play once converted. I’ve tried the steps above over and over again. Help greatly appreciated.
Cheers.
Mark.
Thanks alot for this!
I am tired of Convertor companies who claim that theirs is the “best”, but upon installing it you find that you have to pay £20 or $30 for the “Full Version” of the product with complete rights.
This has not only saved me time, but money.
I have the latest version of VCL media player and there is no
file menu as you mentioned in the (How to convert FLV to WMV, AVI or any other format) ” Step 2: Go to File -> Wizard.” I noticed you have a link for later versions… ” See Paul’s comments on how to convert using new VLC versions.”… but when I click it nothing happens
thanks
followed the info and it worked – no problems
the steps are clear and converted an 11 minute FLV to 11 minute wmv
- filesize did go up by 50% but it still worked and quality was good – bit green at very behining but otherwise fantastic
is everyone else following the directions given – probably not
I have tried this a thousand times and I can’t get anything but the audio to convert. I just downloaded the VLC player and tried converting FLV files. HELP
worked like a charm. cheers
I have the same problem as Tim M…..
I have the new version, no “file” menu!!
Help meee!
I too am experiencing the same problem that a few people have already mentioned whereby the version I downloaded doesn’t appear to be the same as in the screen shots. I”m trying to convert .flv files into .avi, .wmv etc. I tried going through your help menu but I couldn’t find anything that could help me. Could you please send me instructions on how to convert these files, thanks!
I also tried this, step by step, and when I try to open the file with windows media, or Quicktime, it gives me an error. I have tried three times so far, no luck.
When i choose a place to save the file and the start i get an error unrecognised error.It say unsupported format but the file is a flv file
People with the no file menu problem: Paul has kindly explained the problem and the solution about three comment pages back. The permalinks don’t work for everyone but if you rollover the link in the Jan 11 update above you will see that it is comment #57857. So scroll back through the comment pages till you find this. It’s not brain surgery.
Paul’s fix works for me though I get audio with no video, but I know now, after reading all the comments, that this is a Flash 8 encoding prob. I just need the vid, no audio in this case so will encode for that, no probs. Not ideal but hey, it’s free!
Thanks Mr Byte and helpful people like Paul. The rest of you, please read the full comments before you post your whinges!
OMG- this wonderful instructions listing is sooooo awesome! Thank you for taking your time to explain these very simple things to us simple people (who always make things way too complicated). I must have tried almost 2 dozen different ways to figure out just a basic conversion like you explained only to just need one of the first programs i tried! That little orange cone for VLC has come back to mock me! (anyways, sorry for my goofy-rambling) Do you have any hints on how to get the right format for burning DVDs that can be played like on a living room DVD player? Any suggestions are much appreciated, thanks!!!
Hey guys,
for everyone becoming confused with not being able to find the ‘file’ > ‘wizard’ option, it’s likely you are using a newer version of vlc player.
in that case this tutorial wont be much help for you.
with the new vlc player you will need to go to ‘media’ > ‘convert/save…’ this will bring up a navigation window where you can locate the files you want to convert on your computer, you can select them singularly or as a batch and click the ‘convert/save’ button.
this will bring up the [stream output] window, giving you plenty of options for how you want to convert your video/s.
if you dont understand all of the options in the [profile] section then click on the drop down menu where it says ‘custom’, this way you can select a variety of pre-programmed options like ipod, wmv etc.
after you have chosen your conversion options, you can then go ahead and save.
in the [outputs] section put a tick in the ‘file’ box and ‘browse…’ to a location or folder where you want to save your new converted video, give it a file name and include the file type you are converting to, for example (newvideo.wmv for a wmv file, newvideo.mp3 for an mp3 file and so on) and then just click save.
and then save again from the main [stream output] window and vlc player will begin converting your file/s.
i hope this helps anyone having trouble,
it’s a little hard to describe without images, good luck though.
vlc is an excellent and powerful conversion tool in my opinion.
I keep getting the audio in my videos but I get no video no matter if I use WMV or Mp3! Help please!
Hi, I keep trying to convert my flv videos to wmv but whenever I try the finished product has sound but no video! I have tried WMV1, WMV2, DIVX 1,2, and 3. Why won’t the video show up on my movies?
Hello, for some reason 2 days ago i got my converter to convert a .flv to a .wmv and everything worked out great. Well today i tried converting a .flv and the converter converts it but i get nothing. No sound or vid. What is going on here, is there an update or something or would it be wise if i uninstall then reinstall the program. I am running 32bit Vista ultimate.
I downloaded so many softwares to convert my flv to wmv and EVERYTHING sucked!! Your tut really helped a lot for my seminar. Thanks a ton mate!
Thanks alot for this!
I must have a completely differnet version of VLC because I don’t even have a File menu.
I keep getting the audio in my videos but I get no video no matter if I use WMV or Mp3! Help please!
Same here, audio but no video!
Try downloading the VLC portable app from CNET’s download.com!
It looks just like the sample and worked like a charm, first time on XP Service Pack 3.
I followed the instructions and I was able to convert flv to wmv successfully. Thank you sooo much for sharing this info.
hey, having a bit of trouble.
i seem to convert the .flv file perfectly to an mpg or an mp4 file but when i play it through my media player it seems to be playing in slow mo…
why is that?!
I had the tools to do the job right under my nose! Thanks for your info.
Worked perfectly for me.
Although verrrry slow. 17 min video took over 4 hours to convert.
But well worth it. Beautiful output. At least as crisp as the original.
Thanks again.
i have problam with converting i am appled but i have sound but on video
plz help he …………………….
//////////////////////////
///////////////
///////////
///////
////
//
/
Hi,
I keep getting sound but no video when i follow the instructions.
I have the latest version of VLC
Can anyone offer me any advice?
VLC player has been updated since this post. That’s why many of you are not seeing the same options. The new version does not have “File” in the menu.
You need the older version (which is better anyway, in my opinion)–>
vlc-0.8.6i-win32.exe
How bout just a link to an actual, or current tutorial?
Appreciate the help, but frankly these directions are vague, and tossing in tips on differing versions, after the fact.
I don’t see any “custom” settings, or those described dropdown options.
Lewis shouldn’t have to post pics, but isn’t there a decent tutorial that has? Pics might be helpful.
after convert .flv to wmv size of file becomes 20 MB although original file size is only 8MB….why????????????
Followed instructions to the t -however a 2 min flv becomes a 15 second avi or wmv – the rest is missing, so, it doesn’t work
Paul’s comments:
“Step 1: Open VLC player without clicking on a file i.e. open it e.g. from the Windows Start menu. If you do open it by double clicking a video file, then just click stop.
Step 2: On the VLC menu click Media -> Convert/Save
Step 3: In the file pop-up, locate the file that you want to convert and click Convert/Save
Step 4: Set the conversion options as follows:
1) in the “Outputs” section click the “File” checkbox and in the “Filename” field type a path where you want the converted file to end up e.g. “C:\Users\paul\Documents\Temp\myvideo.wmv”. The “wmv” extension is important.
2) in the “Profile” section on the “Encapsulation” tab select “ASF/WMV”.
3) in the “Profile” section on the “Video codec” tab check the “Video” checkbox. In the “Codec” dropdown select “WMV2?. Set the “Bitrate” to 1024 and the “Scale” to 1.
4) in the “Profile” section on the “Audio codec” tab check the “Audio” checkbox. In the “Codec” dropdown select “MP3?. If you get the issue where the converted file only has audio and no video, then try selecting the “WMA” codec instead – it worked for me.
5) click the “Save” button
Step 5: VERY IMPORTANT: WAIT!!!! VLC will now convert the file but won’t display much – don’t click any buttons, just wait until the convertion is complete.
6) close VLC. This is mostly for your own benefit since if you click the play button, then the conversion will start again. However, if you can stay away from the play button, then it is safe to start again from step 2 without closing VLC.”
it worked
I’ve tried this a million ways,(I read ALL the posts)
I tried:
set audio to mp3, wma…
bit rate to 1024, 800, etc.
wmv1, wmv2
flv to mp4,
vlc version 0.8.6 (that version doesn’t even recognize *.flv’s)
I tried the portable version from Cnet, same results.
Best I had was just Audio, no video, sometimes it came out slower than original.
so VLC couldn’t do it for me, the video I was trying was a current (as of this posting) youtube video.
I’ve found Youtube is a cyclical site; the video’s are not always there as they get flagged and removed, so if there’s something there that you like, find a way to download it and grab a copy before it gets pulled; they’ve taken down alot of video’s that I’ve enjoyed and wanted to share with friends, and can’t anymore because they’re gone
I continued my search to solving the flv to mp4 or wmv conversion, and I found a good program, I found it by typing “flv to mp4″ into google search, and it was the first link. This program, called: “Free YouTube to iPod and PSP Converter 3.1.4.54″ can download and convert a current youtube file to a mp4. granted it calls it an Ipod file. but its really just an mp4, which’ll play on my zune no prob.
Paul’s update for the newer version of VLC Player was written on December 29, 2008. I printed off his suggested instructions (I wanted to convert FLV to WMV), followed them to a tee, and it worked beautifully.
The person who also suggested just using this: http://www.any-video-converter.com/download-avc-free.php was also very nice – that worked beautifully too.