Ripping Audio from Flash Video Files (.flv)

An interesting hint showed up on macosxhints.com on Wednesday with all manners of ways to extract audio from an .flv. which means I get to write a nice long wall-of-text TLDR post while I sip coffee.

One method not mentioned is simply to use something like Click2Flash (you can also get it as a Safari extension here) and set it's prefs to allow downloading of the .flv which will have the added convenience of downloading the video as an H.264 if the site hosting the video supports that. Extracting the audio from the H.264 is straightforward after that.

Once you do download a vanilla .flv though you very well may find that VisualHub can't convert it to anything (*cries a little*), so you need to try some other options like this one. If it's a .swf you can try this.

TIP ON DOWNLOADING THE VIDEO FILE:

An easy built-in way is to find it in the Activity Window (Command + Option + A) of Safari and Option-Double-Click it.

Macosxhints' hint + comments can be broken down into this list of methods.

Using VLC:

01) Open it in VLC.
02) Hit Shift+Command+W to open the "Streaming/Export Wizard" window.
03) Hit the "Transcode/Save to file" Radio Button.
04) Hit "Next" (Return)
05) Hit the "Existing playlist item" Radio Button.
06) Select the file to extract the audio from, from the list.
07) Hit "Next" (Return)
08) Tick the "Transcode audio" tick box.
09) For the Codec Pulldown select FLAC (you can really choose whatever is best for you here depending on your needs, Uncompressed may be quite useful.)
10) Hit "Next" (Return)
11) Confirm "RAW" is selected.
12) Hit "Next" (Return)
13) Choose... where to save the file file to.
14) Open the saved audio file in whatever audio editing tool you enjoy. The hint suggests Audacity.

ALL-IN-ONE-SOLUTIONS:

- Use iExtractMP3. FREE. (Didn't try because it's last update was 12-05-08)
- Use RichFLV. FREE. (Didn't try it because it requires Adobe Air)
- Use ffmpegX. FREE. (You very likely already have this installed. It's a bit out of date though)
- Use SWFTools. FREE. (Installing is a bit complex and using the app itself is a little tricky)
- Use Miro Video Converter. FREE. (I've mentioned this one before. Can occasionally be handy, check it out.)
- Use Browser Extentions. (There are too many to list here)
- Use FLV Crunch. FREE (If you haven't tried this app you should give it a whirl)
- Use MediaConverter.org. FREE (It's a website that does conversion for you. I haven't used it much)

Using QuickTimeX and QuickTime Player 7:

01) Open it in QTX. (ymmv)
02) Export it to something QT7 can open.
03) Open it in QT7 and Export... it as audio. (Export Sound to AIFF or whatever your choice is)
04) Optionally, use the semi-hidden Extract audio function: With movie open hit Command + J for the Properties Window, click on the "Sound Track" you want, tap the Extract button at the top left of the window and then Save As... or Export... the resultant window to whatever you fancy. Notice the dot in the center of the close window widget, that means it's not saved.

Using FFMPEG:

(Terminal Madness Alert!)

00) Install FFMPEG (likely you already have this installed if you read this blog)
01) Fire up the Terminal and enter:

ffmpeg -i yourFLVfile.flv -acodec copy namethissomething.mp3

You can drag the file to be transcoded into the Terminal to find it's path. Likewise, you can drag the folder  you want it outputted (that's a word?) into the Termainal as well to set the path to it.

Type: ffmpeg -i
Hit space bar
Drag in file to be transcoded
Hit space bar
Type: -acodec copy
Hit space bar
Drag in location for output file.
Hit Return.

You can really do this with most files, not only .flv's, btw.

Using Handbrake:

01) Open the file in Handbrake (ymmv).
02) Export it as .mp4.
03) Extract it with QuickTime Player 7 (or even Garageband if you don't have QT7 installed or whatever app you like.) People tend to forget Garageband can do some neat stuff with audio.

Using TubeTV and Switch (free version):

I haven't tried this method not just because TubeTV is old (circa 2008) but mainly because other methods are simpler and have more options. I didn't like this line at TubeTV's site: "High quality video conversions using the H.264 codec are performed with QuickTime® and Perian." Why not just use Perian then to begin with?

TubeTV is here.
Free version of Switch is here.

Using MPEG Streamclip: (thanks to reader "andthatallthereistoit")

01) Open the .flv in MPEGStream Clip. (ymmv depending on the type of .flv)
02) File > Export Audio.
03) Done!

MacX DVD Ripper Is Now Free

...for personal use.

The announcement is here.

"MacX DVD Ripper Mac Free Edition is all-in-one free DVD ripper for Mac to backup and rip DVDs to MOV, MP4, FLV, MPEG, iTunes for free on Mac OS.

MacX DVD Ripper Mac Free Edition is a free DVD ripper software for Mac users to backup and rip DVD movies (including commercial DVDs) to MOV, MP4, MPEG, FLV, iTunes video for free, minus all the copy protections that widely used in recently DVD movies, such as CSS encryption, Sony ARccOS, region protection, UOPs, APS, even the Disney DVD movies copy protection. It provides stable and useful solution for you to free rip DVD and watch target videos by QuickTime Player on Mac, edit output videos by iMovie, upload converted videos to YouTube, or enjoy favorite DVD videos on portable devices."

What capabilities does the paid version have that the free version doesn't? Apparently ripping directly to AppleTV, PSP, iPhone specific formats and formatting, but I actually haven't tried it yet.

Hopefully this will simplify this process, and help eliminate messes like this.

Ripping DVDs to ProRes

ProRes is really great but it has some limitations you should know that can trip you up later.

A friend called me tonight saying they were getting an error in Final Cut they'd never seen before which was this:

"Codec not found. You may be using a compression type without the corresponding hardware card."

I knew this wasn't true after talking to them a bit so I asked from step one what they did and discovered a big gotcha when ripping DVD content to ProRes for use in Final Cut Pro.

They'd used MPEG Streamclip to rip video from a client's DVD of old footage. Since my friend wanted to use the footage in Final Cut they set MPEG Streamclip to export (transcode) the .VOB file to ProRes.

(No, I'm not sure why MPEG Streamclip lists ProRes twice in it's export options. They're likely HQ and non-HQ but I'm certain.)

When it was done the file was great, imported into Final Cut and they happily edited away. Until they needed to render something and saw the above error. Any kind of rendering produced that error which we knew wasn't true because they had used ProRes many, many times before. Something else was different.

Dissecting the project I started to jot down all the settings and media types in the project and ran across something not readily apparent unless you know to check.

The resultant ProRes file from MPEG Streamclip wasn't a compliant size for ProRes. It wasn't either:

1920x1080

or

1280x720

If it's neither one of those sizes Final Cut pro runs and cries in a corner. My friend had left MPEG Streamclip to create a file that was 854x480 because next to it, in MPEG Streamclip's options, it reads "(16:9)" which this footage was and their thinking was that since it's a DVD they didn't need to rip it as an HD file.

I suggested they re-rip the bit of video they needed with MPEG Streamclip set to "1280x720 (HDTV 720p)". They did and after substituting the file for the renderless one Final Cut behaved as expected and rendered away.

So if you rip something to ProRes make sure it's a size that ProRes and Final Cut are expecting.

For more info check out this page in the FCP 7 manual.

Ripping Sections of DVDs with Free Stuff

I've been working on a monster of a documentary and some of the footage is showing up on DVDs despite what I've been telling sources and clients. I am typing this in english right?

So here's my (free) workflow for ripping portions of source DVDs to extract the bits of footage that's needed for this project.

You'll need:

MPEG Streamclip
Perian

Optional:
Fairmount

I'm avoiding using Cinematize Pro because, frankly, it's old. I think the last update was something like two years ago. Ok, here we go...

0) Optionally, use Fairmount to copy the DVD's VIDEO_TS to your hard drive. (I'll let you figure this one out on your own but it's of Very Low Complexity)
1) Open up the VIDEO_TS folder and start looking at the .VOB files until you find the one with the clip you need. With Perian, you can open them up in Quicktime Player 7 (which I like to call Quicktime That Doesn't Suck).
2. Make notes of which .VOB files you need and then open them up with MPEG Streamclip. Why not open then with MPEG Streamclip right away? It's your choice but I feel that Quicktime is faster for previewing.

Oh, Quicktime will likely be unable to play the audio since they're MUXed files so if audio is important head straight to MPEG Streamclip here. I should have told you that earlier.

Now, when you open a .VOB file with MPEG Streamclip you may (probably will) see this:

Since the purpose of this post is to just get sections of .VOB files and not the entire file hit "Open 1 file".

3) Now, set In and Out points in MPEG Streamclip using the I and O keys. How about that?
4) Under File in MPEG Streamclip select "Export to Quicktime..." and choose your poison. I like ProRes but select whatever you want. Hit "Make Movie" and grab a sip of coffee.
5) There is no step 5. Hah!

MakeMKV & tsMuxer

If you're looking for a way to rip footage from discs clients insist on handing you, you may want to have a look at MakeMKV. MakeMKV basically rips DVDs, Blu-Ray into .mkv files and also streams them to many players. It's free while it's in beta.

Another converter to check out is the FREE tsMuxeR. SmartLabs tsMuxeR – the software utility to create TS and M2TS files for IP broadcasting as well as for viewing at hardware video players (i.e., Dune HD Ultra, Sony Playstation3 and others).

Ripping just Audio from DVDs

Mac OS X Hints has an interesting post about how to rip just the audio from DVDs. I've only really had to do this a couple of time, but when I get a chance I'm going to test out some new methods.

They cite this method, which uses Mac The Ripper to rip the AC3 audio and then ffmpegx to transcode it to mp3, but the apps are a bit long in the tooth (ffmpegx's last update was January 26th 2008) or a bit tricky to get a copy of a recent version.

An alternate to ffmpegx is MAC3dec but that's a bit of an old app as well. Apparently last updated on August 26th 2004.

Mpeg Streamclip is probably the best way to go that I've seen so far.

(Yes there's OSex but it's pretty old.)