Howto: QuickTime Pro to convert Flash to mp4 mov without recoding

Maybe you got sent a Flash .flv video and want to play it on your iOS device. But you don't want to recode it with the loss of quality.


Here's the original video, which I've opened in QuickTime Pro 7.

With QT Pro 7, I do a apple-J and get the properties of the file.

Since Flash is just another container, I can extract the video and audio.


So, select each track in turn and then click 'extract'. You'll get two new windows

The, do apple-A on the audio track to select it all. Switch to the new video window, and then select Edit > Add to Movie

Then save as self-contained movie, and you'll get a .mov instead of .flv

And here we are

For extra points, you can rename the .mov to .mp4 and it should play OK on most devices. The reason is that the mp4 container format is based on the QuickTime mov container.