"I am trying to find the most cost effective way to convert YouTube flv files to AVI for Mac OS X with which I can make it simple to play FLV on my computers / DVD players... plz suggest a solution which is free to download and is fully working ...even on a trial basis?"

With some tricks, it's now possible to download the videos that hosted and shared on online video sites such as YouTube and Google Video, instead of just watching the video embedded on the websites.

Some video files that are downloaded from these online video hosting sites may be in the format of Flash Video (.flv). For whatever reasons, such as prefer to view and store the videos in MP4 format, or want to play the offline video clips in portable player such as iPad and PSP, or simply don't like to view it with FLV Player, then there is a need to convert the .flv video format to another format such as avi, mov, wmv and .mpg. It’s easy to convert FLV files to WMV, AVI or any other format you prefer with some tools and conversion utilities like iFunia FLV Converter that can be used to do the media format conversion.

If you are looking for Desktop conversion software then iFunia FLV Converter for Mac is the best one. This one is fully compatible with Snow Leopard. It can handle FLV to AVI conversion and can convert also FLV to nearly anything you would want on Mac. The program also supports batch conversion so you can add multiple FLV video in a queue and quickly grab a cup of coffee while the program converts them to the desired AVI format. Here are the easy steps.

Step 1. Run iFunia FLV Converter for Mac and add FLV video files
Download and run iFunia FLV Converter on your Mac and click the big button "Add..." to add FLV video files, you may add as many FLV videos as you want for batch conversion.


(Optional) Merge some separate FLV videos to 1 single file
This is optional. But if you want to output one single file for easily sharing with your friends, simply click on the video titles you'd like to merge , then click 'Merge' button and uncheck the former separate files if you just need the single merged video file. Here 'click on the video titles' is not just check the options, you need to click them to make them highlight. You may see the image below to have an idea.


Step 2. Select the prefer format from the output format list
Select a prefer output format for each video file, here I choose "avi". And then specify a directory on your computer to save the output files.If you’re familiar with the 'Xvid/DivX' compression format used for those TV-shows rips, you might know how nicely compressed those AVI videos are. Here we set the output video format to XviD AVI format which provides a best compromise between file size and video quality. Remember that the output file size mostly depends on the Bitrate you set. Larger Bitrate, larger file size. Actually video with bitrate as 768 is acceptable for watching.


Step 3. Start converting FLV videos
Now you may click the big button "Start" to begin converting FLV on Mac. The convert progress bar shows you how much of the encoding is completed. The encoding time will depend on several variables including: the duration of the video file, the speed of your computer, what other activity your computer is currently doing and the bitrate you set.

Tips:
* iFunia FLV Converter comes with two modes of conversion: convert FLV to video and convert video to FLV, you can choose the model at the beginning.
** FLV to Video mode helps you convert FLV files to all popular video and audio formats, such as converting FLV to AVI, FLV to MP4, FLV to WMV, FLV to MP3, FLV to MOV and more.
** Video to FLV mode helps you convert all the main-stream video formats to FLV video, such as converting AVI to FLV, MP4 to FLV, 3GP to FLV, WMV to FLV, MPEG to FLV and more.
* You can do simple editing like trimming, cropping, adding special effects, watermark to video and deinterlace video by clicking "Edit". Real-time preview provided while editing.
* You can preview the video by selecting the video and clicking Play in the preview pane. You can also take snapshot and save them as jpg, bmp file while preview.