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First published in New Zealand Macguide Magazine - Issue 32

2006 was the Year that Time Magazine announced "You" as the Person of the Year (congrats, by the way) and there are numerous websites on the net with user contributed video clips. YouTube is the most well known site for user-generated content, but sites such as Google video, mySpace and DailyMotion exist also, the latter having more than its fair share of risqué clips (you've been warned).

Whilst watching the clips on the net is all well and good, here I look at a number of ways to get the video clips off the net and on to your iPod.

Google now owns YouTube, but it is interesting to see the differences that still exist between these two sites. Whilst both websites deliver their clips via a web page with a Flash player embedded, Google encourages you to download a clip, whilst YouTube doesn't have that option built in to their website. The legality of whether it is acceptable to download a clip from YouTube is as contentious as to whether the clips on YouTube are legally OK to be broadcast by the person who uploaded it in the first instance. When user generated content equals users uploading TV clips, you're walking a dangerous line.

Fortunately, the way in which these sites deliver the content ‘behind' the Flash player means that it is relatively easy to download content. In YouTube's case for example, a Flash SWF movie file is embedded into their pages, but the content that it plays is dynamically loaded into this player. Using a web browser like Safari, it is very easy to find the direct link to the content that is being loaded in. And if you can find the content, you can download it.

Is that too good to be true?
Well yes and no. If you download YouTube content, you're most likely going to end up with a FLV (Flash Video) file. Up until recently, there wasn't much you could do with that. Now you have a few options: if you own Sorenson Squeeze it is now distributed with its own standalone FLV player, you can use the fairly rudimentary freeware FLV Viewer and a new discovery for me was that MPlayer will also play FLV files.

Of course that's fine for viewing the files on your Mac, but if you want to take these files and use them on a video iPod, they need to be converted to a different format as an FLV will not play on an iPod. You might think this is an expensive process, but in fact it's very cheap or even free, depending on whether you take a software or web conversion approach.

Software conversion
The best-known piece of software in use for downloading and converting YouTube files is the $15 US shareware product TubeSock. Whilst many have been extolling the virtues of the program (and it is a great and polished program to use) I have been happily using a similar freeware product called PodTube. Now before you get excited about the freeware PodTube, I need to point out that it is no longer freeware, with the most recent version (version 2) just being released at a cost of $4.99 US. The reason I like PodTube is because how simple it is to use. Whilst TubeSock is exceptionally similar and offers more format conversion types, you need to do a bit of cutting and pasting of web URLs before the program will download the appropriate file for you.

With PodTube, simply load your YouTube or DailyMotion page, let the video play through (this is important as it makes sure the whole video has been cached onto your Mac) and then click the "Get Video" button on the PodTube application. It then downloads the video in FLV format and then encodes it into mp4 format, suitable for an iPod. You can even tell PodTube to move the video file automatically into iTunes for you.

Web-based downloading
Of course with new web technologies emerging all the time, websites are now providing services that previously were just the domain of applications that you had installed on your Mac.

We've looked at software that will download the FLVs, but there are websites that will do the downloading for you. KeepVid is perhaps one of the most well-known and easiest to use. With an impressive list of sites they can download from, just paste the URL of the webpage that the video is on into the form at the top of their page, select the source website from the pop-up and it will create a download link. Click on this and the FLV (or in other cases another format) video will download to your Mac. Another site that offers this service is Vixy.Net that will convert the FLV for you at the same time, but is perhaps limited in terms of the number of sites it helps you access.

Depending on what site you watch you may have to do some hunting to find just where the FLV or movie file is being pulled from onto the web page. I actually prefer this method, but it means loading the page in Safari and once the page has loaded (but before the clip starts to fully load) I go to the "Window" menu and choose "Activity". From there you can see all the files associated with that webpage and the URL links to them. On YouTube (for example) as the movie loads, you will see one of the listed URLs file size listing increase as it loads. That's the link you need to grab the video!

If that still sounds a bit complex, an excellent freeware extension for Firefox is the VideoDownloader extension. Install this into the Firefox web browser and it places a small icon at the bottom of your web browser. When it senses that the page you are viewing has a video on it, it provides a fast way to click the icon and download the file. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this extension is the wide range of websites it claims to work with.

Another great conversion program for iPod users is the freeware iSquint (great name!) application and it's more advanced shareware version called VisualHub that converts into many formats for many different uses, including for iPods.

Conversions on the web

Finally, I offer up two websites that convert either files you upload or files you point to, that then provide you with an opportunity to download converted files. Be very careful with these sites. You're uploading a file onto their servers that you have to have faith in that they will not breach their own rules, and will delete the uploaded file in the time period they say. If it is a very personal or confidential video that you want converted, I wouldn't use these services.

Usually once the file is converted, you are notified by email, after which you have a set time to download the conversion before it is deleted. What is staggeringly impressive (for those on broadband) is that they allow you to have up to 100 Mb (or more )of video converted at a time!

Both Zamzar and Hey!Watch offer similar features, but there are also differences. Zamzar is not just about video. It will convert files to PDF, PowerPoint, multiple audio formats etc. In fact, more formats than you can shake a stick at! It's a free service and it has the 100 Mb limit as mentioned. Files are deleted from their server after 24 hours, so once you've uploaded your file and received an email to say it is converted, you should download that new file quickly.

Hey!Watch is specifically about video and once you register, it includes the ability to enter a YouTube URL and have it converted on their servers. One thing you won't really discover (at least I can't see it mentioned easily anywhere) until you register, is that they have a limited free service and then a more robust paid service. The free service offers 10 encoding sessions per month, 10 minute video clips, unlimited file size with 6 hour and 12 hour hosting of the original and converted clips respectively. Obviously the upgrade accounts offer more features, space and holding time.

There's plenty of options out there, and plenty of great videos to watch. Keep a close eye on your download quota from your ISP and enjoy getting some great clips of the ‘net.

Published by kind permission NZ Macguide - © Parkside Media

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