FLV vids of webcam streams: audio is NOT mp3

[panhype]

I'm talking ADULT networks like iFriends.net or private.camz.com. There's no problem to save these .flv videos from the browser cache. However i want to edit (shorten) them but after 2 days research i haven't found a solution. This is what i've learnt so far:

- Quicktime refuses to open them - Perian 0.5 is installed
- VLC only plays the video track and sends error messages ('no module found...')
- flv Thing plays both audio + video
- VisualHub craps out ('unsupported codec')
- Sorenson Squeeze 4.5 fails to load them ('not supported') - strangely enough though SorensonFLVPlayer (coming with the bundle) can play both video + audio
- ffmpegX would encode to a different format of my choice but produce an audio track with just random noise

Now Perian's info page (http://trac.perian.org/wiki/SupportedFormats) has this to tell regarding FLV support: "PCM/ADPCM and Flash Screen Video v2 not supported"
And on wikipedia i learn i learn that the audio in FLV files can be mp3 (like on YouTube - which i can handle perfectly fine) but also ADPCM format audio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flv#Audio_format)

My conclusion would be that these webcam networks are using FLV with ADPCM audio. So my question is: What can i do now to edit these videos?

For checking sample clips you can go to private.camz.com and click on any of the girls, then "My bio and video" - hopefully i'm not breaking a rule here/these sample clips do not show any nudity.

[mats.hogberg]

Have you tried SUPER? Has lots of tricks up its sleeve when comes to supported input formats, even if output quality may be better.
<edit>Sorry - didn't realise you were on a Mac...</edit>

/Mats

[panhype]

No worries, Mats It's true that i'm looking for a Mac application but in a special case of emergency i could get access to a PC. From what i've learned so far however SUPER seems to rely on ffmpeg and at least ffmpegX can't handle ADPCM audio in .flv files

[mats.hogberg]

ffmpeg, true, but also MEncoder can be used. (Along with ffmpeg2theora + producer, whatever that means...)

/Mats

[dnix71]

iSquint is free. It converts flv files that can't be done yet in ffmpegX. Flash 8 is doable in iSquint, but not yet in ffmpegX.

Stay away from flv thing. It calls home, or somewhere. Someone here maybe can help on that. If I disconnect (log out) from dsl, then try to play an flv by double-clicking, flv thing opens my Internet Connect utility. My firewall doesn't go off, but it can't dial out anymore because the internal 56k modem isn't plugged in anymore.

There is another free player called SWF & FLV Player from www.mac.eltima.com. They have a "Pro" version that I haven't tried. The free version also allows timed screen caps to be saved.

Once you have an mp4 in iSquint it can be dropped into Toast to make a regular dvd if you wish.

[panhype]

ffmpeg, true, but also MEncoder can be used. (Along with ffmpeg2theora + producer, whatever that means...)

/Mats

ffmpegX uses MEncoder as well. So there ain't much hope that ffmpeg would solve my problem (will try it nonetheless once i have access to a PC)

[panhype]

iSquint is free. It converts flv files that can't be done yet in ffmpegX. Flash 8 is doable in iSquint, but not yet in ffmpegX.

Stay away from flv thing. It calls home, or somewhere. Someone here maybe can help on that. If I disconnect (log out) from dsl, then try to play an flv by double-clicking, flv thing opens my Internet Connect utility. My firewall doesn't go off, but it can't dial out anymore because the internal 56k modem isn't plugged in anymore.

There is another free player called SWF & FLV Player from www.mac.eltima.com. They have a "Pro" version that I haven't tried. The free version also allows timed screen caps to be saved.

Once you have an mp4 in iSquint it can be dropped into Toast to make a regular dvd if you wish.

iSquint is the free/stripped down version of VisualHub and VisualHub can't handle these .flv videos. So my hope is almost zero that iSquint could handle them.

I'm assuming that my problem is audio related cause some of the FLV videos on iFriends.net do not contain any audio and Quicktime (through the Perian plugin) has no problems with those. Moreover the Perian info page makes clear that FLV with ADPCM audio is not supported (the iSquint/VisualHub/Techspansion site hasn't much detailed info unfortunately) - so i would expect that the ADPCM audio track of these FLV videos is the problem.

Yah, thanks for the warning regarding FLV Thing. However i have Little Snitch installed and i can't see any foul behavior so far. But i used FLV Thing only once, just to see if there is any audio at all. As i said, my main problem is to find an application that can convert these files

[Cornucopia]

On a PC, you could always try a GraphEdit graph that demuxes the FLV and reroutes the ADPCM (if that's what it is) to standard WAV/ACM ADPCM decoders, and from there to PCM or some other codec (MP3?).

Scott

[panhype]

On a PC, you could always try a GraphEdit graph that demuxes the FLV and reroutes the ADPCM (if that's what it is) to standard WAV/ACM ADPCM decoders, and from there to PCM or some other codec (MP3?).

Scott

Hmm.. *scratches head* .. that sounds like too much hassle, considering that these are low quality recordings from webcam shows. Guess i'd better off then by playing them in a standard FLV player, capturing them with Snapz Pro and saving them to my desired format... which would be a pain as well though

[terryj]

I wouldn't use Snapz Pro...iShowU is much better and less
of PITA than Snapz is, plus unlike Snapz, it will allow
you a greater amount of converting to options
(DV Stream, and DV PAL for instance).

Weigh your pain vs. how much you REALLY want the content.
if it's amatuer pron, is it really worth the trouble...?

[panhype]

terryj, i will neither demux nor re-capture these vids. They are seriously long and there are quite a few of them, so it's not worth the effort. It would have been interesting if Quicktime Pro could handle them instantly so rather quick editing/cutting them down to shorter versions could be applied.

[albloom]

Have you considered another approach? Like how you snap the
videos in the first place. I use SafariStand (After the video
loads, command-click on it). I looked at the two sites you
mentioned and figured I'd need a shower if I actually saw any
of the flicks, so I didn't get past the home pages.

[panhype]

The approach ain't a problem (not sure if you meant to say that) as Opera holds them in the cache with the .flv extension.

[albloom]

When you're right, you're right. I snagged something from
private.camz.com. iSquint barfed saying it doesnt do VIDEO_TS.
VisualHub barffed because the file is FLASH_8. FLV Viewer had
no trouble. You can get that here:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/22154

I'll be durned if I can find anything that'll do more than just
play that puppy.

[terryj]

Well, if you can play it you can "hijack it",
we've established that, and that the OP
doesn't want to do that.

Guess they made sure you could only be a "Voyeur"
and not "leecher".
*shrugs*

[panhype]

...

Guess they made sure you could only be a "Voyeur"
and not "leecher".
*shrugs*

Hard to tell what's the policy behind that. I would think that anybody with the serious intention to leech will do so. OTOH this restriction affects the camhosts who can't edit their own stuff.

[panhype]

There's some news regarding the audio codec used in these FLV videos. I filed a ticket on the Perian project site requesting to support these missing audio codecs. After great feedback from the developers it's pretty much sure that those sites i mentioned are not using FLV video with ADPCM audio (what i had assumed originally) but a Nellymoser ASAO codec what apparently is a proprietary speech codec.

I tested that myself. Dragging a FLV sample file with ADPCM audio on ffmpegX will give you this info:
Video: flv, yuv420p, 160x120
Audio: adpcm_swf, 22050 Hz, mono

Using the files from these webcam networks will show something else:

(camz.com)
Video: flv, yuv420p, 320x240
Audio: 0x0005, 8000 Hz, mono

(iFriends.net)
Video: flv, yuv420p, 320x240
Audio: 0x0006, 11025 Hz, mono

http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-user/2007-February/007244.html
assumes (scroll down to the bottom) that something like "Audio: 0x0006, 11025 Hz, mono" indeed is Nellymoser ASAO

On the Flashvideo blog
http://www.progettosinergia.com/flashvideo/flashvideoblog.htm
is the info - scroll down to the post from february 15, 2006 - that FMS (FlashMediaServer) indeed encodes audio by using the Nellymoser ASAO codec. And, even worse, that there's no transcoder available that would transcode the audio to something like mp3.

How weird is that ???

[terryj]

...

Guess they made sure you could only be a "Voyeur"
and not "leecher".
*shrugs*

Hard to tell what's the policy behind that. I would think that anybody with the serious intention to leech will do so. OTOH this restriction affects the camhosts who can't edit their own stuff.

I would think that they have probably taken a look at Youtube, Google video, etc.
and realize Content is king. The camhosts files are in the end format,
and are subject to becoming that way upon posting /uploading their files.

Some kind of residual money is made of this site, whether through selling your
email address or upselling you on new "exlusive" videos at a later date.

But so that other "webmasters" don't go and steal the content, they
have enabled a crude form of protection.

still since you can "hijack" the video, you can still leech...
no one has come up with a way to prevent that yet.....

[panhype]

...

I would think that they have probably taken a look at Youtube, Google video, etc.
and realize Content is king. ...

Well.. y'know, this now can lead to a very complicated and long discussion. And without having inside info it's hard to tell which considerations were involved here. So just a few aspects: ifriends made the switch to Flash video early 2005, not sure if YouTube was even online then. I would think they made the switch because they saw advantages in the platform and not because of the locked up audio codec used with flash - as i've said in my post before, Flash Media Server encodes audio into the Nellymoser codec. Now the only (legit) transcoder available must be licensed directly from Nellymoser, for something like $5000. Not a big deal for YouTube or other sites. But there's no real need for webcam networks to spend that extra money. OTOH Adobe apparently isn't too happy about these restricted capabilities of their product (prevents it from spreading faster) and i'm sure they will do something about that.

[dnix71]

I would imagine the audio isn't what most people watch adult webcams for.

The wikipedia article on NellyMoser says when the recording client uses a microphone Flash forces it's use. It's very low bitrate and designed expressly for capturing streaming audio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellymoser

If you are determined to recode an archive, there are two ways, iShowU (full motion and sound capture) which only works in Tiger and isn't free, or Wiretap to capture the audio as you play it, then use ffmpegX to demux the FLV to save the video and remux the two in ffmepgX.

This online service will do it for free: http://www.flv2mp3.com/

Also read this blog:

http://blog.owenvandijk.nl/2006/10/nelly_moser_ope.html

[panhype]

....
The wikipedia article on NellyMoser says when the recording client uses a microphone Flash forces it's use. It's very low bitrate and designed expressly for capturing streaming audio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellymoser
....

Yup, found that info as well. Apparently the Nellymoser codec has quite good realtime capabilities, in other words it encodes without a considerable lag - quite an advantage in the webcam business. That would be an explanation why Flash forces users into that codec when recording a microphone signal.

[panhype]

...
If you are determined to recode an archive, there are two ways, iShowU (full motion and sound capture) which only works in Tiger and isn't free, or Wiretap to capture the audio as you play it, then use ffmpegX to demux the FLV to save the video and remux the two in ffmepgX.

This online service will do it for free: http://www.flv2mp3.com/
...

Ok, just for testing i followed these suggestions and tried the online service. It works (not accepting yahoo email though) but what it does is just converting the Nellymoser audio to an mp3 track.

So i still had the demuxing and remuxing to do. But ffmpegX doesn't demux .flv - only mpg, vob or TiVo.

Well, i could use Snapz Pro and recapture the videos but then i had to babysit the whole process and ended up with another generation before i could finally start with editing. Not really a solution i want to work with

[dnix71]

If you recode a Nellymoser audio flv in ffmegX it unintentionally demuxes it because it can't handle the audio.

The resulting mp4 or avi is simply the video. The same thing happens in iSquint, which is easier and faster.

I did a troublesome swf that way one time. No one program could handle audio and video, so I recoded the video and force captured the audio and remuxed.

There is a Russian cracker who has posted the Nellymoser isn't patented because it's really just an old telephone codec, something like the G729. That would make sense. Minimum size and low delay, but understandable as speech.

[hops]

import the flv into flash onto the timeline, you can then convert it into avi or quicktime and edit those

[Lee Andrew]

you can edit the flv in Premiere with flv importer a plugin for

Premiere.
http://www.flash-video-mx.com/flv_importer/