Issues going from AVI to FLV for streaming video

[Website Captain]

So, I was on Wheel of Fortune the other day (aired on 12/23/2009) and was able to find an AVI file of the episode online. I am trying to put together a web page for all my lame ass friends that forgot to watch me. (Yes, I did pretty well and want to rub their noses in it).

I have set up a page to embed Flowplayer so I can stream the 19 min 14 sec video to them. The AVI file is 183mb. When I converted it as -qsame using ffmpeg to an FLV format, it grew to 792mb. The quality was awesome, but took FOREVER to load and stuff.

I have been trying to reduce the filesize by reducing both the video and audio quality, but have run into some errors that I can't quit seem to overcome. I am running a x386 dedicated server under Centos 5.3.

One problem is that after the conversion, the duration variable doesn’t have any values in it, so Flowplayer doesn’t show the progress bar loading. The below example shows my attempt at a bitrate of 2400k. It still looks as bad as the 600k bitrate, but the file size grew to 4 times the size. It says Audio encoding failed, but the sound is pretty decent.

ffmpeg -i wof-12-23-2009.avi -s 624x352 -vcodec flv -b 2400k -r 24 -ar 11025 -ab 64k -ac 1 wof-12-23-2009.flv
FFmpeg version 0.5, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib --shlibdir=/usr/lib --mandir=/usr/share/man --incdir=/usr/include --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libamr-wb --enable-libdirac --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --enable-shared --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab
libavutil 49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
libavcodec 52.20. 0 / 52.20. 0
libavformat 52.31. 0 / 52.31. 0
libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
libswscale 0. 7. 1 / 0. 7. 1
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
built on Nov 6 2009 19:05:03, gcc: 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)
[NULL @ 0x913c180]Invalid and inefficient vfw-avi packed B frames detected
Input #0, avi, from 'wof-12-23-2009.avi':
Duration: 00:19:14.08, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1270 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 624x352 [PAR 1:1 DAR 39:22], 29.97 tbr, 29.97 tbn, 29.97 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 320 kb/s
File 'wof-12-23-2009.flv' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N] y
Output #0, flv, to 'wof-12-23-2009.flv':
Stream #0.0: Video: flv, yuv420p, 624x352 [PAR 1:1 DAR 39:22], q=2-31, 2400 kb/s, 90k tbn, 24 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: libmp3lame, 11025 Hz, mono, s16, 64 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Press [q] to stop encoding
[mpeg4 @ 0x913c180]Invalid and inefficient vfw-avi packed B frames detected
[libmp3lame @ 0x913e2e0]lame: output buffer too small (buffer index: 8359, free bytes: 1433)
Audio encoding failed

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Mitch Harper

[Baldrick]

To fix the progress bar use something flv metadata injector, http://www.buraks.com/flvmdi/

But you can't that good quality with the flv codec in ffmpeg. I would convert to h264 video in a mp4 instead(yes it works in flash). See for example http://rob.opendot.cl/index.php/useful-stuff/ffmpeg-x264-encoding-guide/ .