Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's Downloading videos from YouTube etc.

Apologies if this has been covered before - don't remember it if it has. Might be useful for vidders etc.

One of the problems with Youtube and several other video sites is that you can't save the videos. I asked about this on Livejournal and got several responses, ways to save the files initially as Flash videos, then convert them to other formats. Here's what I got for Windows:

First, saving the files turns out to be pretty easy if you use the Opera or Firefox browsers. Nobody mentioned any equivalents for Internet Explorer, but they probably exist. Since I don't use IE unless I have to I didn't ask.

For any recent version of Opera that has widget plug-ins, use their "add widgets" menu to look for a widget called VideoDownloader. This does the job pretty well - just paste the address of the video into it and it saves it as a flash video.

For Firefox, the equivalent add in is at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2254/ - I haven't used it but I'm told it works well.

Once you have the flash videos, a program called Riva Encoder can convert them to other formats such as mpg or avi. It's here. This works, but it's slow and appears to lock up while it's working with no indication of progress - a 3 minute file took about 2 minutes to convert on my 1.75ghz PC, the 8 minute Laurie Anderson video I mentioned a few days ago took 6 or 7 minutes.

For Mac you should be able to use either of the downloaders - there are versions of Firefox and Opera available for OS-X. I'm not sure what you do about converting the Flash videos after that but there is undoubtedly some way of doing it.

Thanks for sharing this, Marcus. YouTube and The Daily Show, here I come! <g>

LabRat

Oooh, thanks Marcus! Now I can go get a copy of that "Batman versus Superman" trailer out there on YouTube. Yippee!

While on the subject of YouTube, now that it's gone commercial (ie been acquired by Google) the managers are getting very sensitive on the issue of copyright. Fanvids by people in the Doctor Who fandom are being deleted without warning (no doubt in other fandoms too, but I've only heard about this one). So I think the days when you'll find downloads of commercial output and even fan-manipulated professional output on YouTube are fast disappearing.

If you have Lois and Clark fanvids or trailers you want to upload, use the FolC Video website - that's what it's there for.


Wendy

Marcus - thank you! Just finished snagging the "Batman vs. Superman" movie trailer from youtube.com

Your directions worked perfectly and it only took me like 2 minutes on the black screen to convert it.

Yeah!

I've also had success with the DownloadHelper Firefox extension to download embedded videos and Iriverter for converting them to avi. Iriverter doesn't freeze up and gives good indications of progress, but I haven't timed it so Marcus's suggestion might be faster

Also, Iriverter converts numerous types of video files, including DVDs or vob files, and makes avis that can be played on numerous video mp3/portable media players. So I can download my music videos etc or put my DVD in my DVD drive, run them through iriverter, and watch them on the bus on my Zen

Yay technology!

Which was inevitable, no matter what assurances they gave that nothing would change with their takeover. Several vids of The Daily Show have been disappearing over the last few weeks, too. Some of them have reappeared as people immediately upload them again.

But I have faith in the rebel natures of the online community. <g> If Google interfere with YouTube too much and ruin what is its elemental appeal for those using it, bind it up with rules and regulations and coypright, I can see it being abandoned and somene setting up a new clone of it somewhere else.

LabRat

Oooh Kaylle! I hadn't even thought of using this to get *other* music vids. Cool! Thanks for the suggestion. I have a bunch of LNC music vids in my Zen player - but not other *vids*...

<DJ - who is too embarrassed to admit that all 88 episodes of Lois & Clark are in her Zen player -- whoops! Did I say that out loud? Well... I did have to rip them to my computer for music vids, why not transfer them to the player???>

to download videos from youtube, you can also go there:
http://www.youtubex.com

You just have to tape the adress (or copy/paste it) of the video, and then click on download to save it on flash video file on your computer.

There's just one thing: when you tape the name you want your video saved under, be sure to add .flv at the end, because this website don't add the extension automatically at the saved file.