Windows Media Player Can't Play FLV Files, Solved!

The FLV file extension is an abbreviation for Flash video, which is popularly used by online video destinations like YouTube, Hulu, GoogleVideo, Facebook, MySpace and Dailymotion. Due to its prevalence as a medium for Web video, the FLV format has also been used to circulate digital video downloads. So if you download a video from the Internet, it is likely it is in the .FLV format. However, when you open the FLV file on Windows Media Player, it may give you a warning message saying that it doesn't recognize the file extension. Why Windows Media Player can't play FLV files? How to play the downloaded FLV files in Windows Media Player? In this post, we'll share 3 useful solutions to help you open and play FLV files in Windows Media Player.

Solution 1: Install an .FLV Codec

Windows Media Player uses codecs to play media files. Codecs of many formats are inbuilt in WMP to open files of that format. Yet the codec of FLV needs to be downloaded by the user to run FLV files on WMP. After successfully installing the codec, you will be able to run files with .flv extension in your WMP.

Installing .flv codecs however, may not be for everyone and this method does not come without its drawbacks. If you don't know where to look, suitable codecs may be hard to find and if you're not computer savvy (like most of us are), you might end up installing malware and trojans that'll put sensitive data on your PC at risk.

Solution 2: Play FLV Videos with VLC Media Player

Another useful way to play FLV files on Windows Media Player is to use the VLC media player. The VLC media player comes pre-installed with a ton of audio and video codecs. This option serves as an alternative to use the WMP which needs to be manually upgraded and tweaked in order to play FLV and other file types.

Apart from VLC, you can try other media players like:

5KPlayer

KMPlayer

Plex

Solution 3: Convert FLV files to Windows Media Player Supported Format

The last ideal solution to this issue is to convert the FLV file into a digital video format that is compatible with Windows Media Player, either a WMV, AVI, MPG or VOB file. Process the FLV file through a file conversion utility capable of re-compressing FLV files into one of these digital video formats. A large amount of applications can be used to perform this type of file conversion, such as Pavtube Video Converter (Review). It is just the right tool to help you encode FLV to Windows Media Player compatible format. This FLV converter supports converting FLV to WMV, MP4, AVI, MOV, M4V, MPEG, DivX and hundreds of other formats. Not only does it functions as a FLV video converter, but also as a FLV editor that you can use to trim, crop, add watermark and so forth to personalize and touch up your movies before converting them. Now download the video converter and follow the guide below to get your work done in clicks!

The steps is to tell you how to open FLV Files in Windows Media Player:

Step 1: Import FLV files

Run the program by double click on its icon. Directly drag and drop FLV file or click the "Add Files" button import your FLV files to the program, and you will see FLV file is loaded automatically yet in a flash.

Step 2: Choose output format

Click the drop-down list on the left of "Format" to select "Common Video" > "WMV" as the output format, or select "HD Video" and choose "WMV HD(*.wmv)".

Note: Pavtube Video Converter also contains presets optimized for conversion but feel free to manually customize your conversion output details. Just click "Settings" button to customize the output video and audio settings by yourself.

In addition, before the conversion, you can click Edit to Trim, Crop, Watermarks, Effects, etc. to get what you want. In this way, you can not only personalize the video, but also reduce the output file size.

Step 3: Start the conversion with just one-click

After all settings are OK, click the big "Convert" button to begin FLV to Windows Media Player conversion. When the conversion is done, click Open to locate the converted video files. You can now get the .wmv files to play in Windows Media Player with ease.

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