CONVERT FLV → MOV (FLV to MOV)
Fast, secure FLV to MOV conversion. No registration required.
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HOW TO CONVERT FLV → MOV
Provide the FLV clip
Upload through the browser; transfers are encrypted end-to-end and files are quarantined per session.
Convert to MOV
The conversion keeps resolution, frame rate and bit depth identical to the source unless you explicitly override them.
Save to your device
Click download to pull the MOV to local storage; share the short-lived URL with collaborators if needed.
FLV — Flash Video — was engineered in the early 2000s as a streaming-optimized container for the Adobe Flash Player runtime. Its most common internal codec was Sorenson Spark (a constrained H.263 derivative) or, later, VP6 for better quality at low bitrates; both are lossy, 8-bit, YUV 4:2:0 codecs with no alpha channel support. Audio was almost always MP3 or AAC wrapped in the FLV container. Since Adobe ended Flash support in December 2020, no major browser or operating system ships a native FLV decoder, which means FLV files have become genuinely unplayable on any stock 2025 device without third-party software. MOV — Apple's QuickTime container — is the natural destination for users working on macOS or iOS editing pipelines: Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and QuickTime Player all open MOV natively, and iPhones record directly into this container. The conversion from FLV to MOV via FFmpeg remuxes or re-encodes the video stream into MOV using H.264 (the de-facto default when no ProRes license is present), wraps the existing AAC or re-encoded audio, and packages the result in the QuickTime atom structure that Apple tools expect.
Why convert FLV to MOV
The only realistic reason to convert FLV to MOV rather than to MP4 is that the downstream workflow is Apple-native. Final Cut Pro X and iMovie accept MOV without friction and can read the H.264 stream inside it directly from the QuickTime atom, whereas FLV demuxers are simply absent in those apps. A second scenario is legacy screen-recording or webinar archives — many early 2010s platforms (Camtasia, early versions of Screencast-O-Matic, Ustream) saved recordings as FLV, and editors who need to cut those archives into a macOS timeline find MOV the least-friction target format.
FLV vs MOV — Technical specifications
Side-by-side comparison of the technical details.
FLV
- MIME type
- video/x-flv
- Extensions
- .flv, .f4v
- Video codecs
- Sorenson Spark, VP6, H.264 (F4V)
- Audio codecs
- MP3, Nellymoser, AAC
- Status
- Deprecated since December 31, 2020
- MIME Type
- video/x-flv
- Extension
- .flv
- Category
- Video Files
- Full Name
- Flash Video
- Conversion Engine
- FFMPEG
MOV
- MIME type
- video/quicktime
- Extensions
- .mov, .qt
- MIME Type
- video/quicktime
- Extension
- .mov
- Category
- Video Files
- Full Name
- QuickTime Movie
- Conversion Engine
- FFMPEG
- Container
- QuickTime File Format (ISO Base Media File Format)
- Common codecs
- ProRes, H.264, HEVC, DNxHD, Animation
- Max file size
- 2^64 bytes
| Specification | FLV | MOV |
|---|---|---|
| MIME type | video/x-flv | video/quicktime |
| Extensions | .flv, .f4v | .mov, .qt |
| Video codecs | Sorenson Spark, VP6, H.264 (F4V) | — |
| Audio codecs | MP3, Nellymoser, AAC | — |
| Status | Deprecated since December 31, 2020 | — |
| MIME Type | video/x-flv | video/quicktime |
| Extension | .flv | .mov |
| Category | Video Files | Video Files |
| Full Name | Flash Video | QuickTime Movie |
| Conversion Engine | FFMPEG | FFMPEG |
| Container | — | QuickTime File Format (ISO Base Media File Format) |
| Common codecs | — | ProRes, H.264, HEVC, DNxHD, Animation |
| Max file size | — | 2^64 bytes |
FLV vs MOV — Strengths and limitations
What each format does best, and where it falls short.
FLV Strengths
- Low overhead — the container is extremely compact.
- Designed for streaming — progressive download and seeking work well.
- Decoded natively by Flash Player on every OS for 20 years.
Limitations
- Flash Player is dead — no modern browser can play FLV without conversion.
- Legacy codecs (Sorenson, VP6) are poorly supported in modern tooling.
- Hardware video decoders never added FLV support.
MOV Strengths
- Professional-grade container — supports ProRes, DNxHD, and every pro codec.
- Multi-track friendly — video, audio, subtitles, chapters, markers all coexist.
- Native in every major NLE (Final Cut, Premiere, Resolve, Avid).
- Low overhead — the ISOBMFF structure is efficient.
- Timecode, alpha channels, and HDR metadata are first-class citizens.
Limitations
- Windows and Linux need QuickTime or FFmpeg-based players to read all features.
- ProRes-encoded MOVs are gigantic — 4K clips run 400-900 MB/minute.
- Metadata format diverges slightly from MP4, which causes interop bugs.
Quality & Compatibility
FLV's Sorenson Spark and VP6 streams are already lossy, so the conversion introduces a second lossy generation when FFmpeg re-encodes them to H.264 inside MOV. Quality loss is usually minor at the default CRF 23 setting but is not zero — fine detail and edges that survived the original FLV encode degrade slightly further. If the source FLV carries H.264 video (which the FLV container also supports via the "AVC" tag), FFmpeg can stream-copy that track losslessly into MOV, avoiding re-encoding entirely; the tool detects this automatically. No alpha channel is carried through — FLV never supported transparency and MOV with H.264 does not either in this path. Bit depth is 8-bit in and 8-bit out. Color space is YUV 4:2:0 throughout. FLV files frequently embed minimal metadata (title, duration as a SCRIPTDATA tag); FFmpeg maps duration and creation time where present, but platform-specific tags from Flash Media Server are discarded. Audio fidelity is preserved if the source is AAC (stream-copied) or re-encoded from MP3 to AAC with negligible audible difference at typical web bitrates.
Tips for Best Results
- If your FLV source was recorded with an H.264 video track (common from YouTube downloads circa 2012–2018 and Flash Media Server 4+), the video data is copied byte-for-byte into the MOV wrapper with no quality loss — you can verify this by checking that the output file size is nearly identical to the input.
- Files over 25 MB (the free plan limit) are almost always legacy full-length recordings; use the paid plan for those rather than splitting the FLV, because FLV keyframe tables are unreliable and cutting at arbitrary byte offsets produces corrupted seek points in the output.
- MOV files produced by this conversion play natively in Final Cut Pro, iMovie, and QuickTime Player on macOS 10.13 and later and iOS 11 and later, but Windows Media Player does not ship a QuickTime demuxer — if the recipient is on Windows, prefer MP4 over MOV as the target.
Frequently Asked Questions
Only when it has to. If the codecs inside FLV (usually H.264 or H.265 for video, AAC for audio) are accepted by MOV, we stream-copy — the bytes are repackaged into the new container with zero re-encoding and no quality loss. When the source uses a codec the target does not support, we transcode at a matching bitrate to keep the visual quality close to the original.
With stream copy, expect the job to finish in seconds to tens of seconds regardless of video length — the work is mostly rewriting the container. Transcoding is slower (roughly real-time: a ten-minute clip takes about ten minutes) because every frame must be decoded and re-encoded. The progress bar shows which mode applies.
Yes. Resolution, frame rate, colour space and bit depth are preserved by default; stream copy is literally bit-identical on these parameters. If you explicitly pick a lower bitrate or a different codec in Advanced, the output is rebuilt to those settings, but the default is always "match the source".
Flash Video
Source formatFLV was the dominant web video format during the Flash era. While Flash is now deprecated, many legacy video files still exist in FLV format and need conversion to modern formats.
QuickTime Movie
Target formatMOV is Apple's QuickTime container format, widely used in video production on macOS and iOS. It supports high-quality codecs like ProRes and is the default recording format for iPhones and professional cameras.
Going the other way? Convert MOV back to FLV with the same engine.
Common Use Cases
Share across platforms
Send MOV files to anyone without worrying about whether they have the right software for FLV.
Embed in documents
Drop MOV output into Word, Google Docs, PowerPoint, Notion or a website without conversion warnings.
Optimize size
MOV often produces smaller files than FLV for web, email and storage.
Archive & future-proof
Store in a widely-supported format that will still open on future operating systems without legacy plugins.
FLV vs MOV — Typical file sizes
Approximate file sizes for common scenarios.
- 10-min YouTube 2008-era video 40-80 MB
- 45-min TV show (FLV H.264) 200-500 MB
- iPhone 4K clip (HEVC, 1 min) 170-300 MB
- 4K ProRes 422 (1 min) 400-600 MB
- 1080p ProRes 4444 (1 min) 800 MB - 1.5 GB
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10-bit color grading workflows, Apple ProRes mastering, and automated watch-folder queues.
Related comparisons
See these formats side by side to understand which fits your use case best.
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