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Decoding FLV files with ffmpeg

Tue, 2009-05-12 09:50 — elliot

I'm using Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, but the ffmpeg distribution it comes with doesn't support recent FLV file encodings (like some videos from YouTube). You get an error like this when you try to do anything with them:

[flv @ 0xb800e4c8]Unsupported video codec (7)

My solution was to checkout ffmpeg from its Subversion repository and compile it myself:

$ svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg-svn
$ cd ffmpeg-svn
$ ./configure --prefix=~/apps/ffmpeg-svn --enable-libmp3lame
$ make install

To do the compile, you'll probably need build-essential, as well as libmp3lame-dev, and the *-dev versions of any other codecs you want to use.

Use the resulting binary to do the conversion:

$ ~/apps/ffmpeg-svn/bin/ffmpeg -i infile.flv outfile.mpg

It turns out this version does support those recent FLV files, happily.

Comments

Mon, 2009-06-15 09:10 — Diety (not verified)

This definitely is one way

This definitely is one way to go about it. Though personaly I use keepvid to download from youtube, and it always has an option to just download the movie in an mp4 format. It's just less timeconsuming this way.

Tue, 2009-05-19 14:06 — Single Maria (not verified)

Thanks for the post. I also

Thanks for the post. I also faced with this problem an got an error. I could not do a thing with it. Error, error. I even wanted stop using Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. How nice that there are such people as you who can find solutions and share it with others. Now with the help of your advice I can do a compile without constant errors.

Mon, 2009-06-15 00:11 — Guest (not verified)

Thanks for the info. I've

Thanks for the info. I've been looking for a solution for this.

Fri, 2009-05-29 04:08 — Barbara Ortagus (not verified)

Got it working on my netbook

I ridiculously tired to save a few bucks when buying my netbook, by getting the Linux version instead of the Windows XP version. I didn't think it mattered because I had another windows box. But it died and now this blasted thing is my only computer and I am stuck Googling anytime I want to do anything usefull. Thanks for posting this, I appreciate it.

Barb