Words And Bytes

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Saving YouTube Videos on Mac OS

Some YouTube videos disappear over time, whether they are removed by the original poster, corrupted files, or any other reason. In fact, YouTube itself may stop operating in the future. We'll never know. In part this is how Internet works. Maintaining content is costly, and business plans rapidly and regularly change. So, to keep the story short, we may want to download and keep a copy of those videos we love.

The main issue is that YouTube and other video web sites use Adobe Flash and other formats which are designed to stream video over Internet. These formats are not always friendly when played on a home computer. Here we'll see how to transform those videos into something a bit friendlier.

Note: some companies (like Netflix and sometimes Hulu), probably concerned with users downloading video content, cut the video file on multiples chunks of data, sometimes rewriting on the same file on the browser side. If you find this, the procedure shown here won't work. Here we assume that the file is sent from the website on a single file, even if on a somehow cryptic format.

1. Get the video from the net

Open Safari and go to the page where the video plays.

Start to play it. Usually the video starts to download. It shows a progress bar of what has been played so far and what is still being downloaded and has yet to be played (buffering).

In YouTube, you can easily see what has already been downloaded by passing the mouse pointer over the video, which shows a thicker “progress bar”.

As soon as possible (if possible before the whole video has finished downloading), choose “Window” on Safari's menu bar, and click on “Activity” (or just press control+option+a).

A small window, called “Activity” will pop up. It has a list of web addresses (URLs) that Safari is using, and a status column. A web page is usually formed with a series of elements (text, images, videos, scripts, sounds, ...), each one with its own web address. The Activity window shows each of them, and at its side, an indication of whether it has been downloaded (“Status”), and the size of its content (bytes, KB, MB, …)

Remember to take into account that those windows popping out may be hiding behind the browser or other windows you may have opened.

Within the Activity window, scroll down and find your web page (if you have more than one tab opened in Safari), click on the tiny triangular arrow next to it to expand the contents, and in the list or addresses shown, look to the right, in the “Status” column for one line that shows a large file size (usually over 1 MB), if your video is still downloading to be played, it will show as incomplete.

Select that line and double-click on it to download it. The Safari "Downloads" Window will open and start to download the video file, which is usually called “videoplayback.flv”. This FLV is that infamous Adobe Flash format.

It is usually saved in the "Downloads" folder of your home directory.

When the download window has finished downloading the video, you'll have a copy of it.

Note: On some cases, clicking on the line on the Activity Window won't help. For example, if the file is in MPEG format instead of FLV, Safari will open a Window playing the video. In the case that double-clicking on the Activity Window doesn't work, do the following:

Select the line of the video is on the Activity Window.
Press Command+C on the keyboard (this copies the file URL to the clipboard).
Go to the Downloads Window (also on Window, in Safari's menu bar).
Once the Window is selected, press Command+V, which will paste the URL on the Downloads Window.
The download will start then.

If the video is on mpeg format, the format is already playable, so the next step (HandBrake) is not necessary.

2. Transform the video to a useful format

A free program called HandBrake can transform a FLV video into a more useful format, like MPEG. If you don't have HandBrake, download it here. It might also require VLC, another useful free and open source program.

Once HandBrake is opened, it will ask which video you would like to be transformed. Browse to your downloads folder and select the downloaded FLV video.

Which setting you use depends on your preferences. For example, you may want to transform the video into .mp4 format, which iTunes can play. If changing settings unnerves you, just stick with the “Presets” that HandBrakehas chosen:

Press the "Start" icon on HandBrake and wait until it finishes.

HandBrake can be minimized while it works, and it will tell you when it has finished in its own particular way:

That's it! In this case the new video will be on your desktop. You can now go to the “Downloads” folder and delete the FLV file you'd gotten earlier from the net.

Your reformatted video can be opened in iTunes, or any other video software you prefer (depending on the format chosen in Handbrake).

References:

http://handbrake.fr/

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/tricks-for-activity-downloads-windows-safari.html
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070420014456930

Labels: Flash, HandBrake, Safari, Video, YouTube