IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

Until about a 18 months ago I used a programme called RIVA-FLV to convert videos to upload to you tube. I originally tried to upload AVI files but all this failed miserably mainly because of my lack of knowledge I suppose. Once I was told about RIVA this became so easy and I was pleased with the uploads. Then I got Premiere CS4 and found that it had the facility to convert and so life was easier again. I then found my new machine wasn’t able to play FLV files but I soon installed an FLV player and all is well again.

Why do I tell you all this? Well I have a friend who wants to upload videos to You Tube and I have told him about Riva but the adverts only say its is suitable for up to XP/NT and not Vista etc. (I note that this programme is quite old) I e-mailed the company with my query but – needless to say – no reply. So does anyone know if Riva is OK with Vista? Otherwise, what do any of you use – that is free – to convert from other video formats to FLV.

I would mention that I have again had a look through the wonderful article on this site regarding uploading to You Tube and similar, but I fear the good author has put so much effort into explaining it all in great detail that I'm confused even more so! Does that make sense?
Cheers. Pete.

DON'T !!!

There is no need to translate files into flv format, YouTube and the other video sites have their own excellent systems to do that.

If a film is standard definition and up to about 8.5 minutes long just upload the avi file from your camcorder. It may take an hour or two but you just do it once.

Only if your film is larger than 2Gb in file size do you need to do any work to reduce its size before uploading.

Dave

Thanks Dave for your quick reply and I'm sure you know better than me on these matters. Sometimes I do have films that are up to 10 minutes long (not all of course). When I tried uploading AVI files (so long ago now) they may well have been more tha 2gb - I can't recall.

However the avi files were left uploading 'forever' (18 hours???) with no result. I made enquiries, it may well have been here or some other forum and that's when I was advised to compress using Riva etc. This solved my problem as stated.

I appreciate that things do change very fast, so the next one I want to upload, within the boundries advised, I will try sending up as an avi file to see if it works. I will also tell my friend this and see if sending avi files will work for him.

Thanks again for the reply. Pete

I can never wait for the avi files to upload (however short my films) so I always send YouTube the MPEG2 files. They're the compressed files you convert avi to when you burn them to DVD.

Thanks Tom,
What in practical terms is the difference in using FLV or MPEG2?
Does one give better results than the other?
Pete