How can I remux FLV movies from YouTube (e.g. into MKV)?

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For some obscure reason, I have some video files I downloaded from YouTube as FLV rather than in another format. I would like to re-mux them into, say, MKV (Matroska). When trying to use ffmpeg, I get a Unsupported video codec (7) message. What should I do?

I'd like to be able to do this both in a command-line tool and through a GUI but either is fine.

My OS for the purpose of discussion is Windows XP SP3.

einpoklum

Posted 2013-02-25T21:31:33.757

Reputation: 5 032

What's your OS? I was able to do this on CentOS but I had to build my copy of FFMPEG to get support for codecs like these. – ethrbunny – 2013-02-25T22:08:16.747

Please show what exactly you tried with FFmpeg and include the full, uncut command line output. Without that it's hard to guess what the problem is. – slhck – 2013-02-26T03:57:04.373

FLV is a video codec and MKV a video container, please specify the video codec you want to convert FLV to. – Peter – 2013-02-26T13:27:16.650

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@Peter: FLV is not a video codec, it's a container.

– einpoklum – 2013-02-26T13:30:56.587

The codecs don't matter—FFmpeg can just copy them. ffmpeg -i in.flv -c copy out.mkv for example. What happens when you try that? Or, what was the command you tried before, including the full output? – slhck – 2013-02-26T17:56:07.097

@slhck: Thanks, it seems my problem was an outdated version of FFMPEG. – einpoklum – 2013-02-27T08:45:02.513

Answers

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(as @slhck suggests:)

FFMPEG can indeed remux FLVs into MKVs, regardless of the codecs used. But - this functionality is (relatively) recent, so:

  1. Make sure you have an up-to-date version of FFMPEG. If you don't, download one from the official site (you might be referred off-site for Windows builds).
  2. Run X:\path\to\ffmpeg.exe -i input_file.flv -c copy output_file.mkv

And that should work.

einpoklum

Posted 2013-02-25T21:31:33.757

Reputation: 5 032

Asked: 2013-02-25T21:31:33.757

Viewed: 970 times

Active: 2013-02-27T08:44:10.330