Download Flash vids and play them on your iPhone/iPad

Flash videos. As iOS users, they’re the bane of our existence. Well, at least there’s one way to get around the imposed limitation of our platform: Grab Flash videos from your desktop and put them on your device. It’s not elegant, and some pre-planning needs to happen, but at least it’s do-able.

In truth, the following method of loading vids onto your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad will probably serve users best for keeping valued content with them at all times — not for casual viewing of random clips. Still, if you’ve been baffled by how to load whatever content you want onto your device, including Flash vids, take note of the following:

To start, you’ll want to download a Flash video (or .FLV file) from a vid hosting site. There are tools available you can use to make easy work of this, like Orbit Downloader. CNET even posted a handy article called “Three ways to save video from the Internet” here.

Safari users can also do the following: Open the video webpage and press Command + Option + A That will bring up a list of everything that’s running in your browser. Then doubleclick on the video file. It may or may not show the .FLV file name extension here, but the vids you’re looking for are usually at least a few MB. Most of the others listed will be just a few KBs.

Once you’ve got a vid, you’ll need to use a video converter program. iSkysoft offers a free trial, after which you pay $19. There are also other programs available, like Handbrake. It’s a free open-source desktop application that converts vids into iTunes/iOS compatible formats. This is actually the one I use to convert Flash videos and more, like TIVO recordings, personal movies and other vids.

It can take a little while, depending on the conversion that has to be done, as well as the length of the vid and the file size. For longer videos, I usually let it run overnight.

Whatever you use, if the program isn’t set to automatically import the vid to iTunes, then you’ll need to load it in there yourself. (But first, doublecheck the video by playing some of it. There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve got content, only to discover that the audio doesn’t work or the vid quality suffered too much. So check that before you import it into iTunes!) Once there, plug in your device and make sure the video is set to sync.

This pretty much outlines the methods I use to import video content to my iOS devices. What do you use? If you’ve got a great tip to share, weigh in below.

Via: iSmashphone, plus additional reporting