The video sharing websites, such as Google Video, YouTube, are great resource. Take YouTube for example, this site allows users to view and share video clips at ease, and any one can upload a video clip on this site freely.
The other side of the story is, in an effort to prevent the widespread distribution of illegal copied video files, YouTube encodes its video files in the Macromedia Flash format (SWF) as a player, with Flash video (FLV) data embedded within, which prevents viewers from downloading files and making digital copies. The video files will be streaming directly to the embedded player on the web page without any downloadable link for users to save the video locally for offline viewing or for transferring/synchronizing to portable media player.
Compared with YouTube, Google Video offers, however, wider access for users to downloading video files off their site.
This article will demonstrate to you on how to get around the limitation and download video files from YouTube and other similar virtual video hosting and sharing sites. Meanwhile, this article will show video addicts the approach to play back downloaded FLV files offline, and then convert FLV into MPEG 4 encoded iPod video for iPod or other video formats.
To finish reading this tutorial, please install FLV Downloader on your computer.
Requirements:
To finish this tutorial, you have to install these programs or systems:
iTunes 6.0.1 or later,
Internet Explorer or Firefox with Flash plug-in,
iPod player,
Moyea FLV Downloader,
FLV Player,
Moyea FLV to Video Converter.
1. Find a good video clip on YouTube.com
Tens of thousands of video clips are submitted to YouTube everyday, and most probably you will find something good on the site. Select your favorite video and wait for the file to completely load. Depending on the length of the clip, it may take several minutes to load. In an effort to curb copyright violations, YouTube recently limited the video submission on the site to only 10 minutes.
2. Let the FLV clip fully load in your browser
Loading the video file depends on the speed of your Internet connection and the duration of the video file.
3. Check and download the FLV file
Once the video clip is completely cached on your computer, you are ready to find it and convert it. You should be able to watch the entire clip in your web browser. You man think that you are watching the file directly off YouTube’s server, but not. The video file is actually temporarily saved somewhere on your computer. Let’s find it and download it.
Start Moyea FLV Downloader:
Moyea FLV Downloader is an effective program that helps you download online videos directly to your computer, right from the web page itself. The Downloader is empowered with the technologies of auto-parsing URLs and multi-thread downloading. What it does is to extract the hidden links to the media files that embedded in the HTML code. All you need to do is to follow the download instructions and all is done.
Moyea FLV Downloader supports all the sites that have FLV files, particularly the major video sharing sites such as YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, iFilm, DailyMotion, etc.
And the following pop-up window will ask you to start recording, or monitoring, the current browsers for active FLV files:
Click on “Yes” and the program will automatically download the current FLV files that are playing on your browsers.
These FLV files will be saved in a folder on your hard disc by default. To find out the destination of the FLV files, you can click on the link “Recording Settings…” immediately below the button “Stop Recording” at the left section of the interface.
The “Default Save Path” is the destination of your downloaded FLV file. And you can adjust the related settings in the above dialog box before your check on “Start Recording”.
4. Rename the FLV file
You probably don’t want a file called something like “get_video”, so rename your file according to the content of the file or your particular needs. Be sure to add the “.flv” file extension to the end of your file name so other applications will know it’s a Flash Video file.
If you are happy with the FLV file, you are done and you could play back the FLV file any time with Moyea FLV Player. If you want to convert this file to something that will work in iTunes or play on a Video iPod, keep on and you have to proceed with the conversion.
5. Start a FLV to Video Converter
Moyea FLV to Video Converter is a great application that works fine on Windows 2000 through Vista series. It supports converting FLV files of On2 VP6, H263, NellyMoser audio, MP3 audio, etc. And it supports every common movie format including: MOV, AVI, MPEG, 3GP, WMV, MP3, etc.
Follow the program instructions, you are promised to convert the FLV files into the appropriate movie formats that could be played on your iPod, PSP, etc.
Besides converting, Moyea FLV to Video Converter allows you to edit the FLV files, such as selecting a cropped area for converting, adding a watermark for the end video files, setting the frame size, frame rate, bit rate, selecting a proper audio or video codec to suit your video player, etc.
6. Import the Video into iTunes
And now you can import the converted video files into your player using audio and video managers, such as iTunes, etc.
Now you can relax and enjoy your favorite videos from YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion, etc. That’s fabulous!