FLV Codec/Plugin for Vegas?

Jim H wrote on 9/3/2006, 11:25 PM
Does anyone know of a plugin or codec for Vegas that would allow import of .flv files? I found a program called "Total Video Converter" that will handle these files (and many others) but before I pay for yet another video player/converter I would love to find a way to go direct to Vegas with these files. As an alternative, a FREE converter would be nice.

Thanks.

Comments

Jonathan Neal wrote on 9/4/2006, 12:52 AM
3 Steps...

Step 1. Download the Sony Pictures Digital DirectX Transform Video Plug-In Development Kit v1.0 at http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/download/step2.asp?DID=210

Step 2. Learn some programming languages if necessary, program your import / export plug-in.

Step 3. Distribute it here for beta testing, rinse and repeat.
Sol M. wrote on 9/4/2006, 2:13 AM
It's not a codec for Vegas, but Super should be able to handle the conversion

Link:
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

It can pretty much convert from anything to anything.

Also, you might want to search a bit on google. I just did a quick cursory search to see what was out there and I saw a lot of results for free FLV conversion solutions.
bStro wrote on 9/4/2006, 2:18 AM
Free converters you can try:

SUPER -- I have not tried going from FLV to AVI, but I have used it for other conversions, and it works great.

Riva FLV Encoder -- I use it for AVI to FLV conversions, but I hear it does the other way around, too. I think it encodes to Divx AVI by default, but perhaps that can be configured. Divx = not such a good editing format.

Rob
blk_diesel wrote on 9/4/2006, 5:50 AM
I've tried a couple and they all seem to output files with synch issues.

http://javimoya.com/blog/download-videos/
Jim H wrote on 9/4/2006, 9:53 AM
Wow, that SUPER site sure puts you through the wringer just to get to the download page. Makes you wonder what "else" you might be getting with the download. If just getting the file takes three full pages of instructions, what's the program like?

I'll try later and report.

WRT the three step process noted above: "huh?"
fwtep wrote on 9/4/2006, 10:12 AM
Super-C does seem to have sync problems with AVI, but since the quality of FLV isn't so great to begin with, you can convert to a high bit rate MPG and it will look great and be editable (and in sync).
Jonathan Neal wrote on 9/4/2006, 12:21 PM
Is it possible to write a video/audio codec for Vegas?
Jim H wrote on 9/4/2006, 1:38 PM
You know what gets me is that we shouldn't have to go tooling around with these little converters and obscure players just to get at the video data we need. I have to believe proffessionals come across codec they need to use all the time. One would think the people who pay the bigger bucks for NLEs like Vegas should have access to all of the formats. We are the elete! We need the power! To rule the world!.... or at least YouTube.
bStro wrote on 9/4/2006, 2:19 PM
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a "codec for Vegas.' Vegas uses whatever codecs you happen to have installed on your computer.

I also don't know of any applications that can edit an FLV without it having been converted to something else -- and that includes SwishMax, which is all about working with Flash.

And now that Flash belongs to Adobe, I would presume that if any NLE will be able to get inside an FLV, it's gonna be Premiere Pro.

Rob
Jonathan Neal wrote on 9/4/2006, 2:35 PM
I'm pretty sure Vegas uses some form of codecs, that's what the Shared Plug-Ins\File Formats & Vegas 6.0\FileIO Plug-Ins folders were for.
[r]Evolution wrote on 9/4/2006, 10:22 PM
fwtep

What?
You must be encoding your FLV's to a very low BitRate or using one of these FREE programs which does not give you professional results to convert to FLV. We use the STREAM 1500 and it makes very clear FLV's. (dependent on the Bitrate you select.) We normally go with 250K or 400K.
fwtep wrote on 9/4/2006, 10:55 PM
By "isn't so great to begin with" I mean "it's not exactly pure uncompressed video." A high bit rate MPG will easily be a match for any FLV.
ken c wrote on 9/5/2006, 7:08 AM
although a headache, the best solution I've found to convert FLV to AVI is to manually do it with http://www.techsmith.com 's Camtasia, with an open mic.

That'll grab any flv. Also, to get the source flvs, I use the www.opera.com browser, and set up a C://operacache subdirectory, so it downloads and grabs any flv I want to the cache, which is a lot easier than digging it out of Firefox/IE cache subs.

Ken
Dan Harkless wrote on 11/12/2006, 5:58 PM
I have had nothing but trouble trying to use Vegas to get some FLVs downloaded from YouTube via javimoya.com into a format I can put onto a DVD with DVD Architect. Below are my test results. If anyone has any suggestions for ways to avoid the audio sync issues and multiple conversions, I would love to hear them.

At the beginning of my testing, I had Vegas 6.0d (and DVD Architect 3.0c) installed.


Clip 1 -- 141-second YouTube FLV downloaded via javimoya.com:

* Tried dragging it into the Vegas timeline. Get an error that "None of the files dropped on Vegas could be opened.".

* Ran flvconverter on it. When using the MPEG-2 setting, a working video clip is produced that can be dragged into Vegas, but there's no audio.

* The rawvideo setting produces an .avi that I couldn't get to play. I believe this was both in players (e.g. MPlayer) and in Vegas, but I'm not 100% positive on the latter. In any case, it either didn't play at all in Vegas or there was no audio track.

* Ran FLV Extract on the .flv file. When trying to drag the resulting .avi file into Vegas, nothing happens (not even an error). The .mp3 file does drag over and play successfully.

* Tried dragging the .mpg from flvconverter plus the .mp3 from FLV Extract into Vegas, but the video clip is a few frames longer than the audio clip, which would indicate minor audio sync problems.

* Ran SUPER on the .flv file. I was able to convert to an MPEG-2 file with embedded AC3 audio that Vegas likes, but the video clip is many frames _shorter_ than the audio clip. I was able to successfully render the .mpg into a separate .mpg and .ac3 for consumption by DVD Architect (didn't actually try opening it with the latter and burning it to a DVD, though).


Did additional installs:

* Installed Vegas 7.0b (and DVD Architect 4.0a).

* Tried to see if I could drag in .flv files or .avi files ripped from them by FLV Extract now. No dice.

* Installed Media Player Classic rev611-2.2kxp. At this point it can't play .avi files pulled from YouTube .flv files by FLV Extract (nor .flv files themselves, IIRC).

* Did the installs shown on and http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/video-bookmarklets.html.

* Media Player Classic can now play .avi files ripped from YouTube FLVs and the FLVs themselves.

* Tried again to see if I could now drag .flv files or .avi files from FLV Extract into Vegas. Still no dice.


Clip 2 -- 587-second YouTube FLV downloaded via javimoya.com:

* Ran flvconverter on this clip. Using the MPEG-2 setting once again produced a video-only .mpg, but much worse, when it's dragged into Vegas all the thumbnail frames are red, and if you try to play the video, the preview window remains black.

* Made sure I could still drag in the .mpg from Clip 1 into Vegas. I can. Also, I can reconvert Clip 1 into a .mpg with flvconverter and play that with Vegas. Thus it's not that any of my installs broke flvconverter's MPEG-2 conversion ability, which is a relief. However, it doesn't seem to like this clip, even though it should be in the exact same format as Clip 1.

* flvconverter's rawvideo setting now produces a .avi that can be successfully dragged into Vegas and played, but there's no audio track. (Dragging the rawvideo .avi from Clip 1 now is playable as well. Perhaps this was a codec addition in Vegas 7? Odd, though, since by the name you'd think it'd be a universally supported one.)

* Ran FLV Extract on the .flv file. When trying to drag the resulting .avi file into Vegas, still get the problem of nothing happening (not even an error). If I run GSpot 2.60 pB02 on the .avi, it says the FLV1 codec is not installed. This is strange since as I mentioned, Media Player Classic is now able to play the file, which it wasn't able to before I installed ffdshow and enabled its FLV1 codec per the 1024k.de instructions. The .mp3 file again drags over and plays successfully.

* If I drag the rawvideo .avi from flvconverter into Vegas along with the .mp3 from FLV Extract, this time the audio clip is a few frames longer than the video, which is the reverse of the results of this test on Clip 1.

* If I use SUPER to convert to .mpg (MPEG-2 with embedded AC3 audio; default settings of mencoder, no DirectShow), the audio clip comes out many frames longer than the video. Worse, the video clip is all red in the timeline and produces no video in the preview window, as with the flvconverter-produced .mpg. Guess SUPER doesn't like this .flv either.

* Tried changing SUPER from mencoder to ffmpeg, but then hitting Encode produced a crash (not of SUPER, but of a child process). Checking "Use DirectShow" and trying again didn't prevent the crash. "Use DirectShow" is greyed out when using mencoder, so can't try that combination.


I guess I could stretch the audio track to match the length of the video track, but surely there's got to be some way to do the conversion such that the audio and video stay in sync in the first place...?
dirtynbl wrote on 11/16/2006, 10:46 AM
THE SOLUTION:

i work for a marketing firm and at the end of the year my bosses were giving a presentation to ceo's from lots of different companies (MTV, Pepsi, iTunes/Apple) and they wanted to show a lot of the viral videos and have them edited.

I of course said, no problem, if its video I can convert it. SH$T. I couldn't. I downloaded RIVA, tried everything everyone has said here including SUPER which had issues. Camtasia works, ok, but its not the SOURCE. VirtualDub didn't work consistently, but I was able frame serve to TMPEG and create MPEGs for a few. TOO UNRELIABLE.

Bit of background: I use firefox with a plugin called greasemonkey that loads scripts from userscripts.org. One of those scripts for Greasemonkey allows you to have the option to Save FLV's straight from YouTube!

Great, so I had the FLV. Vegas wouldn't touch it, Virtual dub didn't like it.

So I downloaded and pirated (I hate having to do it, but I needed to be sure the product worked before I bought it) every video converter that charged me to convert FLV files. All the converters made AVI's that Windows Media Player could view, but not Vegas.

I only found one program that allowed me to do it. So I bought a bunch of liscenses for our video department and we use Total Video Converter. I hated having to pay to convert stuff, but it works and the presentation was a complete success.

When you drop a video onto TVC it pops up and asks you to "Please select the format to be converted" and you can choose what you want to convert your FLV to. I tried every option under "MS AVI" and the only one that output video Vegas could handle was the "MSMPEG4v2" setting. I convert all the YouTube videos to that and import the new AVI's into Vegas. Works everytime. Sound is in sync and perfect.
Dan Harkless wrote on 12/27/2006, 3:08 AM
Thanks much for the tip on Total Video Converter!! The program has some rough edges -- for instance, I ran across multiple glaring misspellings in the interface. Also, the documentation is extremely incomplete and there are some features whose use is non-obvious, like the "Activate high quality settings" checkbox on the Video Option [sic. -- should be "Options"] tab of the Settings popup.

When I try to use it to convert a .3g2 clip taken with my Treo 700p (since Sony broke support for such files in Vegas 7, a bug I finally got them to acknowledge), the program just freezes up.

When I tried to convert my test YouTube .flv file to Huffyuv .avi, Total Video Converter produced a file that plays okay in Windows Media Player, but when it's dropped into the Vegas timeline, the audio track is only about 1.5 seconds long. I then tried converting directly to DVD MPEG-2 with the app, but it produced a clip that's the wrong aspect ratio and whose audio plays at half speed when dragged into the Vegas timeline (though in WinDVD the audio plays correctly). Finally, I tried converting to a QuickTime MPEG-4 file -- success! The video looks great and my testing indicates that sound is in sync.

I'm off to http://www.effectmatrix.com/total-video-converter/index.htm to buy a license.

Edit: I bought my copy and then reported the above bugs to the support email address given in the About dialog box, and it bounced with a "mailbox is full" error. Re-sent to the @yahoo.com address they give on the website; no bounce yet.