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Sony Vegas Cannot Render to .flv?
I am wondering if there is anyway to render a video to .flv from sony vegas. I feel like I must be missing something here.
Let me get this straight: Sony vegas cannot render a video to the most popular format for internet viewing?…
No, I do not want mp4 h624. Flv is more widespread and takes up less space and plays for the viewer instantly with no slow loading. Adobe premiere can do this; do they just own the rights to it so no other video software can do that?
I realize that I can convert the video afterwords to flv, but that is a whole other step and will take another couple of hours to render, not to mention lose a little quality due to another conversion. What a waste of time.
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8 Replies
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you is right, sadly.
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Yes, that’s true… Vegas doesn’t render to flash video. Most NLEs don’t, largely because flash video has been such a proprietary format. Adobe has it, but only after buying Macromedia (the originators of flash). You can get it as a Quicktime plug-in directly from On2 (the .FLV CODEC is based on On2’s compression technology).
I rather expect there’s some heinous licensing issues involved, or more companies would support it. After all, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 adds cost, and I agree, flash is no less popular these days (though converters from “something else” really are a dime a dozen).
As for quality… it’s a non-issue, really. Export to any reasonable format, and you’re adding so much crazy compression to deliver an online video, you’re not going to make things measurably worse going though an intermediate CODEC. If quality was that big of a concern, you’d go H.264 anyway.. or offer both. FLV takes up less space because you typically crunch it down more, and people accept this. But at the same quality, H.264 wins, easily.
I’m not talkin’ out my butt here, either, I put up a few hours of FLV video every week.
-Dave
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You’re a little confused… Google’s HD is streaming at 2Mb/s or thereabouts. You can’t watch that, in realtime, not on 14.4kb/s, or even 31kb/s-51kb/s dialup. In fact, YouTube/Google HD is not happy on my 1.5Mb/s satellite link (the best connection I can get, in rural South Jersey). You’re clearly spoiled by too-fast internet connections.
In fact, YouTube’s HD format audio is variable bitrate, at a minimum of 100kb/s. Not for dialup, not even close. When did you last use a dialup connection for more than a moment? Even the old, non-HD, non-HQ stuff from YouTube (and most other FLV video sites) was just under 200kb/s, video and audio. That’s just dandy for any real broadband, but useless for dialup (sure, you can wait for the download, and YouTube does this better than many other sites) and not even functional for ISN and some cellular modem links.
And don’t be so smug.. an embeded HTML object absolutely does depends on the browser. Flash also depends on the right version of the Macromedia/Adobe plug-in being installed. I don’t disagree.. it’s the best way to deliver video today… that doesn’t make it great video, only better than other options.
I’m using Flash at 600kb/s to deliver soccer game video, several games a week. I shoot in 1080/60p, but for the internet, I deliver in 640×360, with audio at a mono 24kb/s. Much more than this and people can’t view it.. not everyone. Much less, and it’s more artifacts than video. So yeah, flash is useful, but it’s limited.
-Dave
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I guess I am still somewhat of a newb. Where is the libavcodec so that I can enable it?
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Adobe doesn’t own the flv Codec, On2 does. Adobe just licenses it from On2 (now from Google). This should get real interesting since Google has a habit of giving away their technology.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Well, it’s all based on the “extension”, in Windows.. but your default .mp4 player (which may be the Quicktime player, but doesn’t necessarily have to be) is the thing that plays MPEG-4 transport streams, no matter what’s hidden inside. Same idea as .flv.. if you have a Flash player installed (which most people probably don’t… this is far more a web format than a PC format, though many players, such as VLC, will play it just dandy), anything in a Flash video wrapper will play, H.264 or On2.
If Adobe wants to build on this, they should work to make the format more popular. MP4 had no special advantage early on… it was just a spec from the MPEG people, and they don’t even really creat end-user specs, they create documents other people (such as the DVD and Blu-Ray people) use to make other, end-user specs. It was initially Apple that popularized the format… because it’s supported on the iPod, and they give away a player for it (two, actually).
Of course, Google has the same issue, if they intend to do anything with On2… there’s an advantage to your video format being popular, but you generally have to give some pieces away for free. At least Google is used to this.. this is also how the DivX folks popularized their various video formats.
I don’t know how the On2 licensing was done. Back in the day, MPEG-2 and On2 were licenced only by the player, not the content. They changed that with MPEG-4, and it’s quite possible others took note of that, too… did On2 actually change per play? If so, could be Google had no intention of using VP6 for anything, and just simply bought On2 because it was cheaper than paying royalties. A company like Google can do that math 🙂
-Dave
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I downloaded the SMPlayer and the extra codecs. I also downloaded ffdshow assuming I need that to run VFW configuration. To enable it the option was libavcodec. I did that on VP6f(flash) and VP6, but I assume the one I really need is VP6f?
In vegas I went to render as, selected avi and clicked custom template, then ffdshow video codec and clicked configure. On the encoder tab of ffdshow, I am unsure what to have set on both encoder and decoder.. The file in vegas is now mpeg1. The decoder option has vp6 and vp6f enabled. I also tried just to have each one enabled separately. I tried many things but the file still renders as .avi
Any more specific instructions would help. Thanks!
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The problem here is easy: when you render an AVI, you get an AVI, regardless of what’s inside. If libavcodec allows a VP6 render inside an AVI, cool… but that VP6 in an AVI. An FLV file isn’t an AVI. FLV is a completely different A/V wrapper type, based on Macromedia’s SWF file format (Shockwave File).
Depending on what you have installed, you can create all kinds of things in AVI files: older Microsoft CODECs, DivX or XVid (based on MPEG-4), etc, via the AVI selection. But anything that uses a different file structure (MPEG, MPEG-4, RealMedia, Windows Media, etc) is a different render… these are on the same level as AVI, not below them. If Vegas did full fledged Flash, the emitter for it would have to be at top level.
Technically, it would be possible to render the AVI with VP6, then remultiplex from the AVI wrapper to the FLV wrapper, but I have not seen any software that does this. Supposedly, Adobe maintains the specs for the FLV file format on their web site.
The newer Flash Video stuff (.f4v) is based on yet another A/V wrapper, the ISO/IEC 14496-12 Base Media format, which is related to MP4 and Quicktime.
-Dave
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