ODG to FLV Converter

ODG to FLV — Is Flash Video Really the Target You Want?

You have a LibreOffice Draw file and something downstream is asking for .flv. Before you convert, know exactly what the trade is: the Draw document is rendered page by page and those renders are held as still frames in a silent Flash Video clip. The short answer is that FLV is worth choosing only when a legacy Flash-era encoder, media server or authoring tool refuses everything else. If you have any freedom at all, ODG to MP4 gives you the same still-as-video in a container the whole modern world plays, and if you do not need video, ODG to PDF keeps the drawing as vectors.

Side by Side: ODG vs FLV

When to Stay on ODG

• You still need to move a box, re-type a label or restyle a connector — those objects exist only in the .odg.
• The drawing has to print or scale to poster size. Rasterising to a video frame throws away the resolution independence that made the vector file useful.
• You want colleagues to be able to edit it. LibreOffice Draw and Apache OpenOffice Draw are free on Windows, macOS and Linux, and Collabora opens ODG in a browser.
• You just need a shareable copy: ODG to PDF keeps vectors and prints anywhere, and ODG to PNG gives a lossless raster with a real alpha channel.

When FLV Actually Makes Sense

• A legacy Flash-based authoring tool, LMS package or media server requires .flv input and will not accept MP4.
• You are feeding an old RTMP-era streaming stack that was built around FLV segments.
• You are reproducing or repairing an archive of Flash assets and the new file has to match the rest of the set.
• You need a still to sit in a Flash timeline for a fixed number of seconds and nothing modern is available in that pipeline.

Outside those cases, FLV costs you compatibility for nothing. No current browser ships a Flash plug-in; the file still opens in VLC and other ffmpeg-based players, but that is the whole audience.

How to Convert ODG to FLV

1. Upload Your ODG File: Drag your .odg onto the page or click "+ Add Files". The whole Draw document is read, so a multi-page file does not need splitting.
2. Pick a Video Codec: "Video Codec" offers FLV (selected), H.264, Flash Video and Flash Video (v2). FLV is Sorenson Spark, the H.263-derived codec of early Flash; H.264 is the same codec MP4 uses, muxed into the FLV container.
3. Set File Compression and Video resolution: "File Compression" opens on "Quality Preset" at "Very High (Recommended)", with Constant Quality and Constraint Quality if you would rather drive a quantizer and cap the bitrate with "Max bitrate". "Video resolution" starts on "Keep original" and also offers presets, a percentage and an explicit Width x Height — this is the pixel grid the drawing is rendered onto.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the .flv. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Which Codec to Pick Inside the FLV

For a rendered page — flat fills and crisp strokes — H.264 is the one that holds edges best at a given size. Choose the classic FLV codec when the destination, rather than the picture, is what decides.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is FLV better than MP4 for a drawing turned into video?

No, not in any dimension that matters today. Both can carry an H.264 stream, but MP4 plays natively in every current browser, phone and TV while FLV plays in essentially none of them — Adobe ended Flash Player support on 31 December 2020 and began blocking Flash content on 12 January 2021. The only argument for FLV is a downstream tool that hard-requires the extension. If that is not your situation, ODG to MP4 is the better version of this same conversion, and existing Flash assets can be modernised with FLV to MP4.

Why does my vector drawing have to be rasterised at all?

Because video is pixels. An ODG stores shapes as coordinates and paths that a renderer can draw at any size, whereas every video codec encodes a fixed grid of samples. To place the drawing in a video frame it is rendered once — the office stage exports it to PDF and rasterises each page at 300 DPI — and after that the file has no idea a circle was ever a circle. Choose the output size deliberately, because enlarging the FLV later just interpolates.

Will the FLV keep the transparent background my drawing had?

No. Video streams have no alpha channel, so anything transparent is composited onto the Background Color before encoding — it opens on White — and the same colour fills the bars when the drawing's proportions do not match the frame. In practice a rendered page usually arrives opaque anyway, so the colour matters mainly for those bars — set it explicitly from the 25 named swatches if it will be visible rather than relying on whatever is preselected. If preserving transparency is the point, do not use a video target: ODG to PNG keeps a real alpha channel.

My Draw file has several pages — what ends up in the clip?

All of them, as successive held frames in one FLV, in page order. The office stage exports the entire document to PDF, every page is rendered, and the renders are assembled into a single clip — nothing is dropped and no splitting is required. If you would rather keep the pages as separate deliverables, ODG to PDF preserves page order along with the vectors, and an image target returns one file per page.

Why is the clip silent, and can I add a soundtrack?

It is silent because a drawing has no audio to encode — that comes from the source, not from the FLV container, which carries audio perfectly well in normal use. To add narration or music, convert here first and then open the .flv in a video editor such as Shotcut, Kdenlive or DaVinci Resolve, which can mux an audio track alongside the existing video stream.

How long does each page stay on screen?

About five seconds by default. The Image Duration setting controls it, running from a single frame — 1/60s, 1/30s, 1/24s — through fractions of a second up to ten seconds per page. Short holds suit a slate dropped onto a timeline; longer holds suit a title card someone has to read.

Does the drawing keep the same colours after conversion?

Broadly yes, but not bit-for-bit. The page is rendered to RGB pixels and then converted to the 8-bit YUV representation video codecs use, which subsamples colour information — fine gradients and thin coloured lines on a contrasting background are where you will notice it first. Flat fills, the bread and butter of Draw documents, survive well. If exact colour fidelity matters more than having a video, use a lossless image target instead.

Should the output resolution match the drawing's page size?

It is a sensible starting point but rarely the right final answer. Leaving "Video resolution" on "Keep original" lets the render follow the Draw page's physical dimensions, which puts a US Letter page near 2550 × 3300 px — portrait, and much taller than any video frame is meant to be. If the clip has to look right on a screen, pick 1920 x 1080 or enter an explicit Width x Height, and accept that the difference in shape will be filled rather than cropped.

Is ODG a dead format too, or just FLV?

Only FLV is dead. OpenDocument is an actively maintained open standard: published by OASIS, standardised as ISO/IEC 26300, with version 1.3 approved as an OASIS Standard in 2021. Draw files stay openable in LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice and Collabora on every desktop platform. That asymmetry is the real argument of this page — you are converting from a living standard into a discontinued one, so keep the .odg and treat the FLV as a disposable deliverable. The ODG converter hub lists the other targets.

How are my files handled during the conversion?

Your ODG is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after the conversion finishes. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and files are never shared or made public.