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November 14, 2006

Put Any YouTube Video On Your iPod

Michael Arrington

54 comments »

There is a ton of good content on YouTube, but copyright infringement claims and DMCA take-down notices mean that any given video can disappear at any time. Having a local copy of the video means you won’t lose access if YouTube removes the video from their site. And if you convert the video to MP4 format, you can transfer it to your iPod as well.

Doing this appears to be in compliance with YouTube’s Terms of Use, as long as you do not distribute the videos to others, and you retain any copyright notices on the files (see sections 2A and 4).

There are two excellent free services that take YouTube videos, download them to your hard drive, convert them to MP4 format and add them to iTunes. For Windows users, try iTube, available here. Mac users should use PodTube, although it requires the use of Safari.

If you just want to get access to the file and view it directly (the VLC media player will play flash-format video files) and/or convert it to another file format, you can download any YouTube video using Oyoom, or try the Firefox extension called Video Downloader. We’ve also written our own tool to download YouTube videos, available on this page, and it’s also embedded below. Just enter any YouTube video URL and hit the “Get Video” button.

For true do-it-yourself’ers, Erica Sadun at O’Reilly has the step-by-step here.

Once you have the .flv video on your hard drive, view it with VLC, or convert it to another format. For Windows users, try Replay Converter. For Mac users we recommend iSquint. There are also a few online file conversion services, but they are not as reliable as desktop software and you have to wait for both the upload and the download.

For additional YouTube tools, see this site.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 1:03 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Pon cualquier vídeo de Youtube en tu iPod en Incubaweb

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  2. TecNovetats » Blog Archive » Posar vídeos de Youtube al teu Ipod.

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Comments

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  1. Buzz

    November 14th, 2006 at 4:39 am

    Great Michael, thanks a lot :)

  2. Ed

    November 14th, 2006 at 6:21 am

    Wired had an article on it in their August issue. You can also download a podcast from Wired on it.

    http://www.wired.com/wired/arc.....video.html
    http://sonibyte.com/audio/raw/1018.mp3

    Me, I do the easy download with Safari and then use iSquint. Quick and easy.

  3. fields

    November 14th, 2006 at 6:44 am

    you’ll have to find them first, good place to start, http://www.seekpod.com/music

  4. Edwin Khodabakchian

    November 14th, 2006 at 8:03 am

    Here is another interesting URL:
    http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/v.....klets.html
    (Given they are bookmarklets, you can drill down into the Java script code and see how the URL of the FLV is extracted.

    Does anyone know if there is a similar solution for yahoo videos?

    Thanks

  5. VideoKarma

    November 14th, 2006 at 9:17 am

    The YouTube processes should work for the Yahoo Videos. If there is a specific Yahoo Solution, please pass along. I did a Google search for it and could find nothing suitable.

  6. dhoom 2

    November 14th, 2006 at 9:26 am

    This is awesome crack.

  7. alex

    November 14th, 2006 at 10:05 am

    This is very cool…

    You can also do the same thing by using the http://www.yourminis.com browser plugin (for firefox and flock)- it actually detects any youtube videos and lets you either download them locally or add them to your yourminis dashboard so that you can then create video collages.

  8. Brian Laesch

    November 14th, 2006 at 10:22 am

    Very cool.

    I would advise everybody to download every video in the LonelyGirl15 collection. The writers from CAA are geniuses. It’s quality entertainment.

    Just kidding.

  9. Michael Arrington

    November 14th, 2006 at 10:22 am

    Alex, yeah, I didn’t think about that. If you download the videos to your dashboard and they are later removed by youtube, do they remain on the dashboard?

  10. tristan

    November 14th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    Well I think you guys should check this program

    Itube works pretty well, easier than what you describe in your post !!!!

    http://www.benjaminstrahs.com/itube.php

  11. Jacob Levy

    November 14th, 2006 at 11:52 am

    Check out http://tinytube.com/ it lets you search for YouTube content and download (?) and view it on your cell phone. Ipods move over, we want to watch YouTube on our smart phones :)

  12. Jacob Levy

    November 14th, 2006 at 11:53 am

    Sorry, correct URL is http://tinytube.net/ not .com :) My bad

  13. Michael Arrington

    November 14th, 2006 at 11:57 am

    Tristan - yeah, i agree. You missed it because it’s buried, but i linked to itube in the third paragraph. It’s absolutely the simplest way to do this if you are on a windows machine.

  14. Converge

    November 14th, 2006 at 12:19 pm

    Tool that allows to download and convert video from youtube to AVI, MPG, MP4, etc

    VideoGet allows you to download videos directly to your computer from most online video sites and automatically convert it to variety of video formats (avi, mpg, flv, mp4) in single or batch mode. Supported websites: youtube.com, AnimeEpisodes, Blennus, Glumbert, TinyPic, PhotoBucket, Yikers, DailyMotion, Break.com, and a lot more.

    http://nuclear-coffee.com/php/products.php

  15. Confused

    November 14th, 2006 at 12:36 pm

    Errr… Michael, why are you posting this? These types of posts I would expect to find in blogs like Lifehacker or maybe Apple fan sites. And what you posted here is not exactly as groundbreaking or new as your other posts. I thought TechCrunch mainly focused on web companies. Anyways, keep up the good work.

  16. Yulia

    November 14th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

    Ok, maybe, I am missing something. But I tried to upload this video from YouTube, using both TC’s plug in and oyoom, and media converter and it did not work. Now, I am using PC, not Mac..what do I do? If it is so easy why can’t I do it?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5xWJj2l8qc

  17. Michael Arrington

    November 14th, 2006 at 1:13 pm

    Confused - just because it’s something I’m personally interested in.

  18. Yulia

    November 14th, 2006 at 2:09 pm

    Just tried to use the TC plug again. Had to download the referenced VLC media player and it worked!!!! ;)

  19. Yulia

    November 14th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    The only problem, with both (if I use oyoom or TC plug in and play the fvl file in VLC is that I only get half of the video!???? What if I need the whole video? Easier to use Camtasia to record it while viewing. Of course, you have to pay to get Camtasia…

  20. Yulia

    November 14th, 2006 at 4:34 pm

    Ok: after fighting the windmills of the sited little guys (Zamzar, Oyoom, KipVid and others) that allowed me only get half of the video…I almost agreed to use stripped version …but with Intel’s geek squad = Josh Bancroft, I found the solution. The winner is Google video that let me download an entire file with no problem!

  21. quicktime rules

    November 14th, 2006 at 5:27 pm

    This is really cool I have always wanted to do this. Are there any ways to also grab content from other flash sites like metacafe.com?

  22. Dave Zatz

    November 15th, 2006 at 7:03 am

    Replay Converter costs money. Riva will do it for free.
    http://www.rivavx.com/

  23. Matt_

    November 15th, 2006 at 7:21 am

    Confused mike can write what ever he likes .

    Engadget for example would be boring if it just wrote about …um….Gadgets
    and they write about copyright and patent issues at least one a week.

  24. jack

    November 21st, 2006 at 6:30 am

    this software can convert youtube video on your ipod.

    get it at http://www.flash-video-mx.com/flv_to_video_web/

  25. Ricky

    November 21st, 2006 at 3:02 pm

    Great read, theres also a firefox extension for those of you who want to check it out. It’s great.

  26. James

    November 23rd, 2006 at 3:11 am

    I have used this tool to convert video. It’s great http://softref.com/programs/de.....Converter/

  27. thomas

    December 1st, 2006 at 7:24 pm

    I use http://www.savetube.com to save any youtube videos, it’s a great tool I think.

  28. james ortis

    December 10th, 2006 at 8:31 pm

    I use http://www.keepv.com/YouTube.aspx for all my YouTube video

  29. Protrox

    February 15th, 2007 at 9:02 am

    Me too I use http://www.savetube.com to save youtube videos.

  30. chriggi

    February 16th, 2007 at 10:43 am

    I recommend http://www.tubefetch.com for downloading youtube videos, there are also a lot of tutorials on how to convert the videos

  31. shelly

    February 28th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    I recommend http://www.snatchvid.com it lets you choose from several sites not just youtube! it’s great!

  32. Coleision

    February 28th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    I have an easy app that Downloads from YouTube, MySpace and many more. Then converts the file to iPod, PSP, DVD, XviD, 3gp, Zune, VCD, SVCD. It does it all! Very easy to use 3 step process! Ohh and did I mention you have full control over the quality settings? That is awesome!

    http://MyVideoDownloader.com

  33. Peppi

    February 28th, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    I’ve tried a few of what’s been suggested….Tube Fetch was definitely the quickest to use…not to mention it had some cool features that named videos. Save tube was really awkward and took me way too long to figure out. :/

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