Goal: Convert a Flash .flv file to .mov on OS X.

I’ve used ffmpeg before and knew this was a good tool for the job, but hadn’t used it in awhile and wasn’t sure I even had the binary installed.

MacPorts

I have MacPorts installed and found the binary under /opt/local/bin. For those looking for an intro to MacPorts and installing ffmpeg, this 2007 www.haykranen.nl post is still useful.

To get to the latest version, just run:

sudo port upgrade ffmpeg

ffmpeg & “incorrect parameters” error

The ffmpeg command I was after was:

ffmpeg -i brain.flv brain.mov

but that produced the following errors:

...
Codec is experimental but experimental codecs are not enabled
...
Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:1 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
...

There are some mixed messages on how to address the second error, with some tacking on more and more parameters to ffmpeg.

However, the simplest solution that I found was the one that worked. Examining stream #0.1 reveals that it is the audio conversion that’s creating the problem. There’s a parameter to simply copy the audio stream, which does not require any decoding/encoding or parameters:

-c:a copy (ffmpeg documentation on stream copy)

 The final working command is:

ffmpeg -i brain.flv -c:a copy brain.mov

This ran successfully and eliminated the “codec is experimental” error as well.