How to convert a directory of videos using ffmpeg

Here is a simple command useful for using a wildcard (not a regular expression) to select filenames to convert from one video format (or audio, for that matter) to another using FFMPEG on Linux.

The command below will convert a directory of .flac files into .mp3s:

for f in *.flac; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -acodec libmp3lame -ab 320k  "${f%.flac}.mp3"; done

To convert videos, we could use this command:

for f in *.flv; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.flv}.avi"; done

This converts a directory of .flv video files into .avi files.

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1096665

Google Adsense Video Ads go Worldwide

When I logged into my Adsense control panel today, I felt an urge to experiment with some new ads. As it turns out, that was a great idea, because I discovered a new option in my Setup tab - Youtube Video Ads.

Google released Video units some time ago, but only for US publishers. I was pretty disappointed at the time, as I live in Australia and was therefore denied access to the network. It seems they've now expanded Adsense for Video to the world though - today I successfully linked my YouTube and Adsense accounts and started publishing video ads.

Here is a sample Adsense for Video unit:

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

As you can see, the Adsense portion is shown at the top (or overlayed on the video), while user-selectable content (via keyword selection or channel targeting) is playable as normal below. Right now I'm experimenting with the options, and I'll try and post some more info as it comes in.

If you're a non-US Adsense publisher, you might want to log in to your Adsense account today - do you have Adsense for Video yet?

Update: Apparently this is breaking news - nobody else seems to have blogged about it yet! If you want, you can Digg the post.