- Quick specs
- Price: Free
- Operating system: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/NT
- Date added: April 13, 2005
- Total Downloads: 6,408,564
- Downloads last week: 13,490
- Product Ranking: #4 in Rippers & Converting Software
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- This product is on 20 member lists. Add to my list Add to my Watch List
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 153 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff on October 18, 2005
Who said free had to be flimsy, too? This robust video converter ably packs a number of file formats into the Flash video format and is stylish to boot. Riva FLV Encoder works well with the usual suspects: AVI, WMV, MPEG, and MOV files. With a graceful, well-designed interface that shows its developers care about details, this video converter also offers a healthy set of conversion options. Frame rate, bit rate, and audio-compression options all can be set to your preferences. The program can "cut" video files into JPEG images, if needed. We were very impressed with Riva's conversion speed during our tests. Another nice detail is the inclusion of several presets depending on your network type (ISDN or DSL, for example). What's more, you can easily save settings to save time later. Overall, Riva is a great freeware application for Webmasters looking for a reliable (and inexpensive) way to convert video files to the Web.
Publisher's description
From Rothenberger Global Training Solutions:Riva FLV Encoder enables you to encode video files to Flash video (.FLV) files. It currently supports the most common video formats, including AVI, DV, MPEG, MOV, and WMV, and includes a player to preview the converted .FLV file. The program supports custom output settings and allows you to save your configuration as profile for easy access. Version 2.0 includes FLV 1.1, cropping, and padding.
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User reviews
- All versions: 3.2 starsout of 153 votes
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- 4 stars
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- 2 stars
- 1 stars
- Current version: 3.1 starsout of 146 votes
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- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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4 stars
31 out of 31 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"An excellent video encoder that converts avi, dv, mpg, mov, wmv to flv."
Pros: This is the only free stand-alone FLV Encoder that I know of. It works well but it's not perfect, particularly in its support of newer codec versions.
The product has gained a lot of overly negative responses from users. The central theme seems to be "freezing" issues. Most of those issues are codec based. For starters, Riva FLV Encoder 2.0 won't convert WMV (version 9). One workaround is to use Windows Movie Maker and convert the WMV to AVI (Microsoft confuses users by calling the resulting file an AVI but it's not. AVI is not a codec, it's a file format. The AVI from WMM is actually a DV). Rename the extension to .dv and Riva will encode it.
Keep in mind that Riva FLV won't convert the underlying file (any format) if you don't have the supporting audio or video codec or if the codec was released in 2005 or later.
In addition to "codec" issues, it is important to pay attention to the video and audio settings within the program. You can't simply accept the defaults. The settings should be based on the settings of the underlying file and may need to be slightly reduced for quality considerations. Also, limit any disk intensive activity (foreground or background) while encoding.
Personally, I assist on an animation blog at GoQuake and have been pleased with the quality and size of the encoded results.
Cons: This program suffers from poor documentation and limited support for file formats and newer codec versions.
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4 stars
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"A fix for the blank box effect"
Pros: It encodes avi, mpeg, wmv, flv and other formats every direction and in many combos...all for FREE! Ive been looking forever for a free encoder that does all of this in one program! Say goodbye to my other video encoders!
Cons: It doesnt have an indicator as to how much progress has gone by.
Ive also had little time to play with it, but I wanted to mention a fix for the blank boxes:
At first, I installed the program, and it only had blank boxes everywhere, rendering it useless. BUT, if you go to the RIVA encoder website, then go to support, then to forum, then to 'riva flv encoder/player', then you will see the first sticky note that describes how to fix this issue. To download the proper flash install, scroll to the bottom of the site and there will be a link to it.
- you will find a specific flash install that FIXES this issue. (The program needs - Flash Player 9 Active X plugin for IE, to run properly)
The link will give you an immediate download option.
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5 stars
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"Great Prgram for my needs!!!"
Pros: Easy to use..very fast conversition. I needed to convert FLV to SWF this works great. Can also covert to mpeg, ETC. Only captures sound track if to AVI. Be sure your Codecs are correct. Must thank "FuguRitual" for tips!!! Post was VERY helpful. Perfect answer for what I needed. ty RIVA!!!
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4 stars
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"Great Product"
Pros: Encodes with great choices to resolution and bit rate. Interface is easy to use. IT'S FREE!
Cons: I have experienced the WMV crash. So I just converted the file to MPG and then to FLV.
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5 stars
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"This product is free!!!"
Pros: This is an amazing product, it can not be compared to any other product because its the only free flv encoder on the web.
Cons: Looks as though theres a thing that spins round to show its doing something, but it is frozen for most of the encoding proccess. Do not listen to other who say it freezes it is still working.
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1 stars
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"Spyware by self install"
Pros: Nothing I like about spyware programs.
Cons: The very first second I ran this program the firewall alerts came flooding in, not only was it attempting to contact a remote server but the warning indicated that the program was attempting to monitor key strokes.
Not the sort of program you can trust if you buy on-line so quite why the editor has rated it so high is suspicious to me...
It may be free but that does not mean that the vendor has any right to snoop on the user does it?
I hope that the editor takes appropriate action over this program.
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5 stars
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"Simply the best tool for encoding FLVs"
Pros: Almost only "pros" (see "cons")
Cons: Program window totaly froze up while it was encoding. I almost killed it. Fortunately at this moment it was finished. :)
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5 stars
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"nice and easy to use"
Pros: It's very easy to use. Within minutes after install I was encoding my flv files. On top of it, it's free.
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5 stars
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"Free FLV That Works"
Pros: - Free and fast FLV encoding.
- Player included.
- Cropping allows letterboxed movies to be in true wide format.
- Bitrate can be values other than presets.
- XML files for presets very handy.
NOTE: Lack of 16:9 in Riva FLV isn't a problem if you're embedding video on a Web page. For a 320x240 video simply enter 425x240 to fix the aspect ratio. I do this within WordPress and it works fine.
Cons: - Quality isn't as good as WMV for the same bit rate.
- Some limitations in supported codecs. The ones I care about are:
+ Can't convert WMV 9.
+ Can't convert Indeo newer than 3.2
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4 stars
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
Version: Riva FLV Encoder 2
"Not bad, delivers as it promises"
Pros: Basically the screen does tend to freeze but that applies when it is really converting, so just leave it awhile for it to complete(it doesn't take very long). One thing I didn't like was when i tried converting flv to avi and it couldn't play in most of my players(even VLC said error in codec but still managed to play). So i converted everything to wmv instead. There isn't quality loss(as long as you convert it correctly, making sure the screen is the same resolution as the original).
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