Convert AVI to FLV

I have .avi files from my digital camera which I want to display on my on-line gallery.  So I wanted to do a simple conversion from the AVI format to FLV (flash video) because that is what my gallery uses by default.  I thought this should be a simple conversion, and hoped there would be a “How-to” somewhere but it proved difficult to find a clear method to perform the conversion.

I ended up trying a number of applications, like ImageMagick, FFMPEG and various small freeware apps.  However I either couldn’t get them to work, or they only did one file at a time.

Finally, I tried MediaCoder, which worked surprisingly well, and is a GUI application.  I think it uses a number of the other basic applications in the background (Lame, FFMPEG and mencoder for example), but has a nice forum and clear instructions.  I was able to transcode my avi’s to flvs in a few min after getting it up and running.  The main stumbling block is that you need to set lame’s resample rate to 22050 Hz in the audio tab, otherwise you will get an error, and the conversion will not work.

As an added bonus, MediaCoder is a stand-alone app, it doesn’t need installed which I like since it doesn’t mess about with the registry.

In case you are wondering, I am using ZenPhoto with the flowplayer plugin for displaying these converted avi’s.  Also, in ZenPhoto, if you place a image file in the same directory as the .flv ZenPhoto will display the picture as the thumbnail for launching the video.

I decided to discontinue my gallery, so the below link to view the video do not work!  However the process worked well.

If you want to check out some of the videos of Liam my son, click on the picture below!

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