Step 1: Buy Snapz Pro X (it's $69.95 for the video-capable version; there's a 30-day demo you can try).
Step 2: Load the video you want to capture in Google Video or some such other service. Queue up the video and pause it.
Step 3: Launch Snapz Pro X. Click on the Movie tab, check "Use movie guides," uncheck "Cursor Visible" and drag the little window selection tool until it fits the video you want to capture. Make sure you check the "Mac audio track" box. If the video is under 480x480 then you're good. If not, then change the Scale options to make it less than 480x480.
Step 4: Double-click the screen to start recording, then quickly hit that play button (hopefully, everything has buffered by now).
Step 5: Keep capturing until the video is finished playing. Keep in mind that you cannot open new windows during this process if they will block what you are capturing. You also want to make sure than any other programs, like iChat, that emit noises are turned off to prevent that audio from showing up in your capture.
Step 6: Once the video finishes playing, hit whatever key combo you've chosen for Snapz Pro to stop the capture. Another window will open offering to Save or Delete the capture. Make sure you've installed 3ivx. Change the video settings to 3ivx, Medium Quality, Best Depth, and the audio to IMA 4:1 44.1kHz stereo, 16 bit.
Step 7: Wait for the file to export fully. Open the resulting .mov file in QuickTime Pro and export to iPod (or use one of the other video to iPod conversion utilities to do the same thing).
Step 8: Drag the resulting video file over to your iPod. Enjoy!
*Note: This will actually work for any video file or DVD, not just with Internet files. For example, one could buy a TV Show off the iTMS and then use this to circumvent that silly, silly DRM. Also, if you tweak step 7 nicely with the proper MPEG4 settings, you could skip step 8, but that wouldn't be easy, so I didn't try it for this post.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-18-2005 @ 6:32PM
Aaron Hoffman said...
Ha ha - I've been doing this for weeks with whatever video files I want.
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11-18-2005 @ 6:35PM
John Hopper said...
Another option is to use VLC, you can dump many streaming protocols to your disk. I used it to download System of a Down's video from their site, it was already MP4, so I didn't have to convert it and it runs great on my iPod.
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11-18-2005 @ 6:43PM
Klemens said...
So what about podder? Isn't that exactely what Podder does? for 10 bucks? In just ONE step?
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11-19-2005 @ 1:16AM
Bart said...
use iSquint, that's a lot easier! It's also open source. http://homepage.mac.com/tylerl82/
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11-19-2005 @ 10:23AM
dc1 said...
er, ummm, do you mean to tell me you have to buy a third party app to put video on the new iPod??? Its just another file type!
Can't you just drag and drop??? I would be PISSED if I bought/had an OSX machine and a new iPod and could'nt just plug in, drag, drop and view...or is this "story" a sales pitch for a new app..Sat Morning Ramble
Dale
Boston, MA
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11-19-2005 @ 11:19AM
C.K. Sample, III said...
To everyone hating on these steps.... this is *specifically* for grabbing video that you cannot download: like streaming video on the web or flash animations, etc. Thus the INTERNET VIDEO in the title of the post. None of the regular encoders will capture this type of video off of the web.
*sheesh*
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11-19-2005 @ 12:19PM
jomy said...
CLIFF'S NOTES version:
1. Buy $90 worth of software only to find out later that it could be done easier using free software.
Dale, no you don't need to buy any software to put video on an iPod. iTunes handles that. But the video must be encoded in either MPEG4 or H.264 at appropriate bit-rates and resolutions. Encoding is what the article is suggesting you waste your money on when there are free solutions.
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11-19-2005 @ 5:19PM
Ryan said...
I like checking out TUAW on a daily basis to see if there's some interesting tidbit I hadn't heard about, but quite often now I just laugh and then hang my head in shame at some of the posts that come along. Such is the case today. And the way you defend it in the comments just digs a deeper hole. Are you serious? Buy a $70 app to screen capture streaming video? You're dealing with the mac crowd here. People that care about aesthetics and quality. You're suggesting to essentially make a dub of a dub of a dub, or re-compress a jpeg to make it smaller and then send it to print, or take 128kbs mpeg and convert it to a 128kbs mp4 for the sake of having mp4. Each instance just makes it worse, and for what end result?
Why not be a little more serious and talk about using VLC or mplayer to do a dumpstream and then be a little more serious with some CLI kung fu. It's not hard and I would tend to think that the hoops you routinely jump through are far harder than one line of code in the terminal, or ticking off a couple check boxes for the gui inclined. The hardest part may be explaining how to find the stream url in the source code of the html page. Because then you have, regardless of which route you take, the ACTUAL file that was being served up that has no generational loss and best of all, faster than real time rips since it downloads it as fast as your pipe can handle and writes it to disk instead of trying to display it. Open that in QuickTIme Player and export to iPod if need be. If it's WMV, you can use many a free programs out there to convert it, including VLC itself, or buy Flip4Mac if you want little hassle and export it right in QuickTime Player for the iPod. And it's still cheaper than buying snapz pro and provides better results that has no minimum system requirements.
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11-19-2005 @ 6:10PM
C.K. Sample, III said...
Whoa, Ryan, chill out with the negativity dude. Those are all good suggestions, but I don't know how well it would work with Google Video, which is what I was converting when I did this little trick.
Also, to edit with Flip4Mac costs a bit. If someone already has Snapz Pro X, then this isn't that crazy of a way to do it. I mean it does get the job done. It's how I grabbed this Fred Rogers interview (http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22Academy+of+Television%22+%22fred+rogers%22)
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11-20-2005 @ 8:04PM
Xenedar said...
Make sure your screensaver is switched off too. You might be careful enough to walk away and leave the computer doing its thing without interrupting it or opening anything, but a screensaver will quietly and happily ruin the whole thing.
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11-24-2005 @ 10:11PM
Xenedar said...
>er, ummm, do you mean to tell me you have to buy a third party
>app to put video on the new iPod??? Its just another file type!
Umm... if it's streaming, how do you propose that you put it on an iPod? It's not "just another file type"; your computer doesn't store streaming video as a file, which is the entire point of streaming.
Once again, it's *streaming*. "Streaming*. The author of this article is using Snapz Pro to turn something that is fleeting and non-permanent into an actual real file. After that, do what you want with it.
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