In case you ever need to convert one of those flash videos that you find all over the web these days (for example on youtube.com), you can use your linux box very easily to do so. But first, download the .flv (flash video) file from the website. To do that, use “unplug” addon for Mozilla firefox (just go to the Firefox addon site and search for “unplug”).

The plugin gives you a few choices to download streaming video/audio from a site by giving you (what it assumes) to be the best link to download the media file.

So after you have downloaded the flv file, simply open up the terminal and run this command:

user@server:~$ ffmpeg -i get_video.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320X240 video.mpg
A great link that gives more information about this process is in my del.icio.us and here it is: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1656936