I know I have been posting tips purely on Mac matters lately because I have access to some pretty high-end stuff at work, so here's one for the masses (like me when I'm @ home):
I wanted to get one of my videos back from Youtube that I misplaced in my piles of unlabeled discs to post on another site I just joined. It's not super-easy, but fairly painless.
First, if you haven't switched to Firefox...why the hell not? Stop using IE (highly vulnerable/unweildy) or Safari (clunky/site-support spotty), because it has a mass of need-specific tools you can add to it. The one I picked for downloading Youtube (and supposedly Google) video was Ook? Video Ook!...I know, but the usefulness outweighs the bad name. This add-on puts a little icon on your browser status-bar (but you can put it elsewhere with the options). Depending on your system, you either single- or left-click on the icon when on a video's page to download an .FLV file.
Now what can anyone do with a Flash file (that's what an .flv is)? This is where VLC comes in. Like Firefox, this massively useful, tiny video player is free and runs on the major operating systems with zero hassle. Again, why are you still using Win-Media Player or Quicktime for which you can't find specialized codecs for different formats? If you don't know what codecs are, then you need VLC. It has all of them (except a couple that are only being used by trouble-makers and I don't run inot those often).
So you open VLC and
- click File
- choose Wizard (Streamin/Exporting Wizard for Mac)
- when the window pops-up, choose Transcode/Save to File
- under Select a Stream, click Choose and find your fresh [videodname].flv download
- Click Next (duh)
- Check Transcode Video, choose Mpeg-2
- Check Transcode Audio, choose MP3
- Click Next, choose where you want your file to go and name it [whatever-you-want].mpg
It'll do stuff, how long depends on the length of the movie. Then, boom (or bam or wiffle, etc.), you have your video back.
If that's all too difficult for you, check these guys' article. They're hawking somebody's wares and suggest something called greasemonkey, which adds another layer of complexity. But whatever ou do, get Firefox & VLC. They make life easier. VLC isn't the best thing for transcoding, but it plays video awesomely. And if you want a one-stop, free install, that one's it.
