The VideoLAN Forums

I am using VLC 0.9.6 on Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit

Convert / Save using an
AVI at HD Xvid >> FLV using H.264 AAC
Streams PERFECTLY

when i try to save the file i get a 0kb file.

Please help, i am going to be using this for a website and i can't afford any of the other converters out there.

Why don't you create MP4 files if you want to stream H.264 AAC? And what are your transcoding options?

i need to save it as a FLV in order to use it on a flash media player.

when i say it stream perfectly, i mean that i can click on stream, and the video in vlc is exactly what i want.

transcoding options:
FLV h.264 800 kbs AAC
is there something else i need to do?

Flash players play MP4 files also. And x264 encoding is broken in VLC so you can't use it. Do like Adobe suggests, not like all shitty video sites like Hulu does.
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Fl ... _format.3F

thanks for the tip.

any idea what program i'd use to encode x264 AAC MP4 if it's broken in VLC?

AVIdemux is free. Handbrake is also free.

i want to broadcast PAL videocameras to WEB, should i use FLV (as flash output?). is there any problem ? What is easy way to do?

If you want to do real time streaming, normal FLV output transcoding ain't gonna work. If you just want to do some videos that people can watch, then it is a option.

If you want to do real time streaming, normal FLV output transcoding ain't gonna work. If you just want to do some videos that people can watch, then it is a option.

Why not?
What is the problem?

I think you have to do RTMP streaming if you want to do real time video streaming for Flash. I am not 100% sure about this.

It seems to me that the original post on this thread got sort of hijacked. The point was that VLC saves a 0-byte file when you are saving to an FLV file, even when you are simply changing the wrapper to FLV. I can confirm this happens in v1.0.5 Goldeneye running under Windows XP Pro x64. I have an M4V file encoded by Handbrake (which VLC is perfectly happy to play); yet, when I use VLC Convert/Save to save it as an FLV with "Keep original video track" and "Keep original audio track" checked, the result is a 0-byte output file.

(1) The VLC docs say that VLC _plays_ FLV files via FFmpeg. So, you have to have FFmpeg installed for FLV PLAYBACK support:

http://wiki.videolan.org/Common_Problem ... .28.flv.29

(2) If you look at FFmpeg's file format support, you find out that it does NOT support OUTPUT to FLV:

http://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html#SEC4

So, it sure looks to me that VLC does NOT support FLV output, and therefore the FLV choice in the "Encapsulation" tab shouldn't even exist. It confused the hell out of me until I did the above research. An app should not provide an option which really does not exist, and then output an empty file with no error message. It's terribly confusing to the end user. THIS is the issue that the original thread poster brought up.

Note: Since I can imagine someone posting "what encoding were you trying to convert?" even though I'm just changing the file format, here's what's in the MP4 file (from Mediainfo):

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L2.2
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : No
Codec ID : 40

(1) The VLC docs say that VLC _plays_ FLV files via FFmpeg. So, you have to have FFmpeg installed for FLV PLAYBACK support:

That info is outdated.

So, it sure looks to me that VLC does NOT support FLV output, and therefore the FLV choice in the "Encapsulation" tab shouldn't even exist.

There is/was FLV support http://wiki.videolan.org/FLV but it doesn't prolly support H.264 or AAC input.

I just did convert AVI to FLV using H.264 + AAC(MP4). VLC version 1.1.5. Look good sound good and all in-sync.