Farkie is a free online tool that lets you extract and download multimedia content from websites and social networking services, including videos from YouTube and MP3 files from MySpace playlists. The web-based file downloader has been in public beta for about two months now, works without the need to register and is easy as pie.
All you need to do is copy-paste e.g. a public YouTube video URL, and Farkie will offer the video file to you in a variety of formats (MP3, AVI, WMV, WAV MOV or FLV). I converted the video of Susan Boyle’s performance in the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent and was able to download it in just a matter of minutes, albeit with a bit of quality loss. Firefox users can install an add-on that will dock a toolbar with which you can easily download videos by merely inserting the public URL and hitting a button.
Likewise, by entering the URL to a public MySpace profile into Farkie and clicking download, you can easily extract the playlist from the page and display all of the songs found in the list, ready for download in MP3 format. You can also use Farkie to download scripts, stylesheets and images from any website, or to scrape Flash games from the multitude of online gaming sites out there.
While this tool can come in handy quite a lot, I’m pretty sure some people – particularly at Google and MySpace – are not going to be happy with it. YouTube, for example, has in the past made it clear that it intends to crack down on services that allow for video downloads from the site – we should know -, especially now that it’s rolling out a video program of their own along with several of its partners.
Enjoy Farkie while it lasts. Or check out similar services like File2HD.com as an alternative.
Kind of a cluttered homepage.. way too much text.
yeah thatz true its always good to list main points on home page to show user how simple is ur solution…….nobody wants to read this much
It’s also redundant to use ‘beta’. Dude, we know you’re a start up. 5 year old Gmail still uses it.
It takes away from your logo (which is rad).
no workie with myspace
gets a forbidden error.
The Myspace music ripping doesn’t work and that’s really the only reason I clicked through to the site. I get a 403 forbidden error too and downloading the mp3s leaves me with a 4kb file.
I’m not really one for downloading youtube videos- unless I end up getting into VJing or doing stuff like Mike Relm, which I don’t see happening anytime soon, although (not that the frame by frame concept is new…) I’m betting soon enough we will see an artist using the http://www.yooouuutuuube.com effect in either a music video or live performance… I mean, watching Dan Deacon on it is kind of like visual rap, but awesome: http://tr.im/dandeacon (careful, not for the epileptic or those who get nauseous easily, seriously)
hmm Farkie sounds a good tool for me, will definatly use it with youtube
it reely works mate u should try it
Nice, I would like a local copy of more than a few YouTube clips. Of course if YouTube wanted me to be able to download clips, they would add that functionality.
It is interesting that so many startups provide services that they know a large company might not want them to provide. How difficult would it be for YouTube to stop them? Any thoughts on this business model?
Firefox extension Video DownloadHelper is enough for me; simple and functional.
Not to mention http://www.file2hd.com
When I use Video Downloadhelper, I get mp3-files with names like “3537238373684_252734950650574634526348.mp3″, and sometimes it can’t find the files at all.
I second m_gol, I use downloadhelper, it works perfectly (and subtly).
farkie, farkie GI?
Sothink Web Video Downloader works for me (within Firefox)
Yet again you are backing something in clear violation of YouTube’s terms and conditions.
Great idea – but the site needs some major work.
Seriously, can somebody answer how long these guys are going to last? Its a great service but breaches loads of Terms Of Service, I’m sure.
cool!
This is pretty cool!
Videobox from Tasty Apps is a Mac only application that does the same thing, but license costs about $20.
wow. now I have alternative beside KeepVid. Yay!
“Please try again, farkie has encountered an error…”
always like thats for youtube
The owner of this website is a complete idiot. He hacked and redirected one of the most popular websites in this niche to his own website which increased his Google ranking for certain key words. Stay away people.
While you’re covering startups, why not cover one of my six (plus two more that will launch tomorrow) startups?
what are they?
I tried converting a video on YouTube to both avi and wmv and my players would not play either. I do not know what that means. Maybe almost no one commenting tried it. Maybe there is something specific to my experience.
TC, get a grip.
There are about 2 gazillion services like this one.
What makes this post worthy?
The fact that the owner probably paid for it tbh lol
I sense some jealousy.
Not jealousy, just honesty.
If you say so.
You sound like a 14 year old kid coming on here and flaming this guys website.
Must be envious eh?
ever tried http://reeplay.it ? just two mouseclicks to capture any web video to a personal storage, transcode and sync to my iPhone and my wii..
Slick site for converting those files.
It must be something special, seeing as there have been many sites posting about it.
cnet.com even posted an article about it.
VideoGet does it better. It downloads from 800+ other video websites and convert to any video/audio format.
http://videoget.com
It does not work for me. Too complicated!
I finally used http://download...utubevidoe.org/ to download the youtube videos.
Using Farkie, & other tools, to grab video from the site violates YouTube’s TOS. See 4C, 5B & 5F on YouTube’s TOS page http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
How can you people support this? If you could download the video, YouTube would allow a download video link like other sites do. The fact that there is a tool that illeglaly allows you to get video, you should be acquiring, does not make it right. There are tools that allow me to break into your car or house, but using them is not right (or legal).
Hi
I use http://www.vid2pc.com , very simple
I Found a Web site , its Really Cooll, You can download Videos , We Get Lots of Options we can download by copying Youtube url or Search and Downlaod.
Hope Its Very Usefull for All TechCrunch People
Sorry i forget to post the website address
it is http://tubezen.com
Another option to download youtube video. It’s easy and no installation needed.
http://getvideo.comxa.com
http://www.vid2pc.com – simple site and great tools.
myspace is changing their music set up anyone know a site/program that can work with the new music?
even better a program that coud work on a Mac?
If you want to download videos from YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Break, Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Trilulilu, 220, tare.ro and peteava.ro try http://www.tubeminator.com
You can save videos to your computer for free in whatever format you prefer: avi, mpg, mp4, 3gp, mov, wmv, flv.
Plus you can also edit the file and crop out the parts you don’t want using a simple and intuitive video convertor.
Nice website…and it also has a video presentation on youtube:http://www.yout...h?v=cVXm7gzCCfE