Encoding FLV Video Without Adobe Flash Encoder For Free

Encoding FLV video, which is Flash video, has never been easy. Currently the easiest way to do it is to use the Flash Media Encoder. This is a bundled product with Adobe Flash Professional. However you have to spend $700 just to get it. And no, I’m not kidding.

Is there a separate encoder without the need for Flash Professional? No. If there were, and Adobe priced it right at $50, people would buy it in droves. But that will never happen.

The only way to successfully encode FLV video is by using FFMPEG. However this is a command line utility that you must compile “by hand”. Is there are Windows way that is GUI-based and relatively easy to use?

Yes.

It’s called WinFF.

This is a very ugly application, but it does the job it’s supposed to do and works every time.

We’ll say for the moment you have a WMV you want to convert to FLV. This is how I go about it:

1. Drag-and-drop the file inside the app.
2. Hit the big Options button on the right to see the extra menus.
3. From Convert To… select Websites
4. From Device Preset select Flash Video (flv) for Web use Fullscreen. If it’s a widescreen video, choose widescreen instead.
5. Choose your output folder.
6. Set video bitrate to 400
7. Set frame rate to 30
8. Set video size to the width and height you want
9. Leave Aspect Ratio blank
10. Click the Audio Settings tab (at bottom next to Video Settings)
11. Set Audio Bitrate to 96
12. Set Sample Rate to 44100
13. Set Audio channels to 2

Hit the Convert button at top. Your FLV will be encoded. It will take time and a command prompt window will show up showing the progress.

It will look something like this:

When encoding, you see this:

This does work, and you will have your FLV video that you want.

WinFF also recognizes a ton of other formats, such as MP4, MPEG, MOV, AVI and so on.

This is the only free solution for Windows I’ve found that actually works for creating FLV files without the Adobe Flash Encoder software.

And yes it works on XP, Vista or 7. Will probably work on 2000 as well.