Group: Play Freedom/VLC
Here we present instructions for using VLC version 1.1.2 to convert any common video format to WebM. VLC runs on GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS. We presume the same recipe will work on future VLC versions; please leave a note on the talk page here if you have any trouble. On GNU/Linux you can also do this job with Transmageddon, Arista, PiTiVi or FFMPEG.
Prerequisites:
- VLC 1.1.0 and greater
- A video to convert
Contents
-
1 Instructions
- 1.1 1. Open VLC.
- 1.2 2. Navigate to "Media" -> "Convert/Save..." or hit Ctrl+R.
- 1.3 3. In the "Open Media" window, click the "Add.." button.
- 1.4 4. Now simply navigate to the file(s) you want to convert, click (Ctrl+click to select more than one), and hit the "Open" button.
- 1.5 5. With the file(s) you selected in the "File Selection" field, click the "Convert/Save" button.
- 1.6 6. Then under "Destination", click browse.
- 1.7 7. From here, choose where the file should end up and name it something like example.webm.
- 1.8 8. Next, click the "Profile" dropdown, to find and select the WebM option.
- 1.9 9. Click start to begin transcoding, and you should see the media progress bar and the time in the lower-right corner indicate how far it is.
- 1.10 10. Open the resulting WebM file to verify that it works.
- 1.11 11. Upload to YouTube
- 1.12 12. Change links or embedding code to request HTML5
Instructions
1. Open VLC.
2. Navigate to "Media" -> "Convert/Save..." or hit Ctrl+R.
3. In the "Open Media" window, click the "Add.." button.
4. Now simply navigate to the file(s) you want to convert, click (Ctrl+click to select more than one), and hit the "Open" button.
5. With the file(s) you selected in the "File Selection" field, click the "Convert/Save" button.
6. Then under "Destination", click browse.
7. From here, choose where the file should end up and name it something like example.webm.
- Option: You may select "Display the output" to play the video as it converts it, but that may slow things down significantly.
8. Next, click the "Profile" dropdown, to find and select the WebM option.
- If you are converting an interlaced video file, for example from a digital camcorder with a resolution like 1080i rather than 1080p, select "Deinterlace", otherwise ignore this.
- Option: Advanced options for quality and other settings are available if you click the button with the icon of tools to edit the selected profile.
9. Click start to begin transcoding, and you should see the media progress bar and the time in the lower-right corner indicate how far it is.
10. Open the resulting WebM file to verify that it works.
11. Upload to YouTube
Make sure not to use any of the 'annotations', 'display ads' or 'audioswap' options.
12. Change links or embedding code to request HTML5
To get YouTube to serve the video as WebM to supporting browsers, even if they haven't opted in to the YouTube HTML5 beta, add "?html5=1" to the end of the src parameter in your <iframe>, or to the end of your link to YouTube. (If the link already has parameters, the ? needs to be an & instead.)
E.g., for an embed:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/oNvb2SjVjjI
becomes
http://www.youtube.com/embed/oNvb2SjVjjI?html5=1
