Not to bore folks, but, in order to meet the "fair use" requirements of copyright law in the U.S. I have to regularly download video files from places like YouTube.

I teach biology and environmental science in a local college and make my own "Impress" presentations instead of using the canned ones of the textbook.

Fair Use says, basically, that when a teacher has an "inspiration" to use a copyrighted "work" of some kind that the teacher MERELY has to provide notice to the viewing students that the work is copyrighted and who holds the copyright. The teacher can then use that work, .....

ONCE...........

without having to notify the copyright holder and ask for continued use of the work.

That..........is ..........quite..........often..........just difficult.

The e-mail addy of the said holder doesn't work, the person has moved you name it.

This is why, even given that the U.S. Congress went the extra mile in developing the law, that teachers use "canned" "powerpoints".

Teachers in the U.S. operate in a constant state of "fear". They are fearful of a lawsuit by a student. They are fearful of being "written up" by a bureaucrat or supervising teacher. They are in fear of not been "taught enough" to be able "to teach". And, they are paranoiacally fearful of copyright infringement.

The simple way to eliminate the fear of copyright infringement is to use something that somebody ELSE that has "authority" and will "take responsibility" tells them is ok to use.

However, that is all to my advantage!! The students really appreciate seeing information presented in a different format and they are more engaged by it.

So...........back to .flv......

I, because of the really great provision of the copyright law, therefore, change out the videos I use each semester.

An example would be that I use a twenty second clip of an amoeba feeding. The next semester I delete the file and find another one.

The problem is that .flv............usually..........works at the college....after all they have paid Adobe big bucks for their programs.

But...........Media player........well.........sometimes.........you know.....

So............for several years II have LABORIOUSLY converted .flv to .mpeg.

IceApe, however, won't accept the extension for .flv, at least I was not able to get it to work to where I could view a video at You Tube, so I used VideoDownload Helper to download the .flv file...( there is a preview picture, as you know, at You Tube to give you a hint of what is in it.).

Right clicked to play with mplayer and it played!! How cool is that!!

However, I must say, that many of the newer videos are provided as .flv and as .mpeg.

But............

The SOLE post on .flv............had at the end...........this SIMPLE thing, that I did not know: change the extension to .avi.



So..............again...............

.flv WORKS.............and I learned something!!

Great Job!!!

woodsmoke