can you download vids. from youtube onto a chiPOD

[kwimbo]

i think i heard somewhere you can put movies from youtube into a clone and i was wondering if it is true and if you can do it, how do you do it

[lattesurf]

kwimbo , you can try vdownloader to do so, it works for me http://www.mympxplayer.org/how-to-do...id-vt2779.html

However, it does not have a resume function, so if your download gets cut off in the middle, you'll need to restart the whole download again.

[RoGuE_STreaK]

Yep, can do, I've done a few now (only had the player about a week).

First part is to actually obtain the flv (flash video) from youtube. You need a third-party plugin to do this, in Firefox there are quite a few, such as "UnPlug" and "Video Downloader". Just wait for the video to fully load, click the button for the plugin (most put a button on your toolbar or status bar), and save as a *.flv file.

Then get MediaCoder, a FREE transcoder that can convert all sorts of formats to and from each other. Output as an avi, and fiddle with the size settings to get an aspect ratio that fits your needs: eg., my chipod uses 128x128, so I just add some space to the top and bottom of the usual 3:4 ratio videos (eg 320x240) to make them 1:1 (320x320). Sorry if that's unclear, I'm at work and a bit rushed. ops:

Anyway, then convert your avi to amv with the amv convert tool.

So: get the flv, convert it to avi, change it's aspect ratio to suit your screen (amv converter will resize to the right size), then convert to amv. Once you've done this a few times, you can make default settings so you just need to load the file and hit "transcode".

[chiclete]

@RoGuE_STreaK
It should gives a really really bad image in the end.
Youtube has not a good connection at all and after being encoded two more times...

Maybe you should try to compress using a lossless and then converting it to amv... I don't know wether is possible or not tough.

[RoGuE_STreaK]

chiclete, it depends on how you are doing your conversions, and what codec you use. I've been using xvid or divx, and when combined with the fact that you are resampling from 320x320 down to 128x128, a lot of the digital artifacts get smoothed out. You could use an uncompressed or dv-avi codec if you wanted, but really, what's the point? The quality is more than watchable as far as I am concerned, and we're only talking about (well, in most nano-clone cases at least) a 1.5" screen.

Sure you could get better quality converting from DVD, but that wasn't the question asked. Youtube = lots of music videos you haven't been able to find elsewhere, with a lower download size than trying to find a bittorrent. Quick'n'nasty, but it works.

[admin]

I think it's better to use vdownloader firstly to download the original file as an .avi file. Then either resize it to the right size then convert it to an .AMV or convert directly to AMV.

Too many conversion steps I feel will degree the quality of the video...

[RoGuE_STreaK]

Hmm, interesting... looks like it actually goes direct to the original source file? If that's the case, then yeah, definitely a better way of doing it. Then again, the file appears to be much larger, so I guess it depends on what connection you have and if you are willing to sacrifice some quality by going for the flv instead.

(eg., Jimmy Eat World's "Pain" was 7.55MB for flv, avi is 20.6MB from the same source)

[chiclete]

I don't know if you are going to download it as an AVI, are you? I guess it also recompress... I'm just not sure...

[admin]

Yes, there will be a conversion that is needed for flv files to avi, but avoiding too many conversion and reconversions will minmise on quality lose as each time you convert, you will loose some form of quality.

[lattesurf]

the vdownloader software downloads the original file source format. So whatever that the person uploaded into youtube (mpg, avi, divx, etc) would be the same exact file that you download off it.

In a way as binh mentioned, you'll avoid an additional encoding stage which would lose some quality.