Youtube .f4v issue

[paxman]

Can someone shed some light on this bizarre situation?

I have downloaded several HQ youtube videos that have the .flv extension which after opening them in Quicktime 7 (with Perian installed) they show in the inspector as H.264 video and AAC audio tracks, which I believe is standard for the .f4v container. This downloaded file plays fine in Quicktime and VLC. However, iTunes will not accept an .flv file. If I save the original flv file as a .mov file, now iTunes can import and play the video fine (just wrapped the H.264 and AAC into a Quicktime container). Now here is where the strange part happens.

VLC can NO LONGER play the video portion of this track in the new .mov, and other software will also not recognize the video portion of this .mov. Is the H.264 from the original .flv not compliant somehow? I want a fully compliant H.264 .mov file that will play back in any player. However, I don't want to transcode because of quality loss. Even if I try to export the original .flv in Quicktime with "pass-through", I find that the "pass-through" option is greyed out. Usually that means there is a problem with the H.264 not being fully compliant. Cutting and pasting the video and audio tracks separately into a new file also does not work. There is definitely something not right about the youtube H.264 (and I assume .f4v H.264) in general.

Any ideas? Most people just recommend using a video transcoder to change from .f4v to .mov but that seems ridiculous if both use H.264 and AAC.

[lordsmurf]

Most people are also stupid. They convert way too much, butchering the hell out of quality along the way.

Have you tried a simple rename of .mov to .mov.flv or .mov.mp4 for VLC?
That's that I have to do for the jwplayer -- rename .mp4 to .mp4.flv, and it plays just fine.
In fact, why not just use the mp4 wrapper anyway, if it's H.264?

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