friend sent me a .f4v video file. was told win med player (v.10) can play
it. no luck, error message "cant read file".
can anyone confirm/deny if win med player will play a .f4v?
The , f4v extension is from Adobe flash and is somewhat like a .flv
flash file. In the normal usage of a .flv or .f4v file one uses swf
flash to create a player file, and flv files and f4v files are used
for the video content. Both the .swf and flv or f4v files are put up
on the server. However the code for a page using this type of video
only calls for a .swf file, because it automatically links to the .flv
or .f4v and starts downloading it to the viewing computer. Also Adobe
flash must be installed on your computer. To play using .f4v, at least
version 9 of flash is required.
Both flv and f4v were not designed to be used as stand-alone video
files. However people started capturing them, and a market for flv
players soon developed. Some popular players such as Real now will
play flv directly. There have been plugins for WMP to play flv. in the
past, but I have no need for them since I encode proper swf/flv files.
If a player will not play flv, it is highly unlikely that it will
play f4v, since f4v is newer. If you want to see your f4v videos, you
might try a free trial download for the Moyea flv player which also
plays f4v. I have it as a free part of a Moyea flash encoder package.
So far as I know, WMP 11 does not play .f4v as delivered, but someone
might have a plugin for it to do so. If I am wrong about this, a
Microsoft employee who often posts here likely will correct me. Below
are a few references.
http://www.flvsoft.com/play_convert_f4v/
http://www.moyea.com/ (free trial download of flv player that will
play f4v also)
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fileextensions/f/f4vfile.htm
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video
http://danorlando.com/?p=62
http://www.file-extensions.org/f4v-file-extension