Filed under: Audio, iPod Family, Software, Video, iTunes
Rip, mix, save and convert YouTube videos for your iPod with TubeSock
If saving YouTube videos as favorites and making your own playlists online with their services isn't enough to quench your thirst for their literal flood of content, TubeSock lets you take things one step further by allowing you to save the videos and even convert them for your iPod. It's a small utility that allows you to enter a YouTube URL or simply a video ID, and it can show you a preview of the movie and offer a couple of saving and export options including H.264, PSP, audio-only and even a plain Flash FLV file. TubeSock can also install a bookmarklet in Safari for speedier delivery, and it can even send exported videos straight into iTunes to complete the ultimate YouTube-to-iPod workflow. After playing with the demo, I'm impressed. Compression is impressively speedy, and for bonus points it automatically cleans up the Flash file it dowloads once exporting is done.
The demo is limited to exporting only the first 30 seconds of any video until you fork over the $15 registration fee. TubeSock is a Universal Binary and available from stinkbot.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
deevee said 9:22PM on 8-03-2006
or... you do it for free with isquint!
but eh that's just me...
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Bruce Anderson said 9:28PM on 8-03-2006
Yeah...um...I just use Greasemonkey to save the FLV and iSquint to convert the file, and it's 100% free. (minus, of course, the cost of the computer and my 'net hookup... ;)
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Raz 4 life said 9:39PM on 8-03-2006
I'm not going to buy it, but I love the name!
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Daniel D said 9:40PM on 8-03-2006
I dont think either of these two options are as quick as this one, this makes it so easy I value my time too much to be arseing around with the processes outlined above (but not too much to be watching youtube ROFL)
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kajoob said 10:28PM on 8-03-2006
Yeah here is the FREE easy way to do the EXACT same thing:
1.) Download the video you want (see this link: http://www.macrecon.com/2006/07/28/the-easy-way-to-get-youtube-videos-into-your-ipod/ )
2.) Throw that video into iSquint which is FREE ( http://www.isquint.org/ )
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David Chartier said 10:34PM on 8-03-2006
I use iSquint on an almost daily basis, but TubeSock offers a level of convenience above and beyond the 'free' workflow that requires a bit more hacking and slashing.
As others have pointed out in posts elsewhere: Convenience = $.
Also, I think it's worth pointing out that iSquint is donationware, not free. Developers have bills to pay too, especially generous ones.
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blackout said 10:38PM on 8-03-2006
i like this app
i bought it.
it's cheap
it "works like butter"
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Matthew said 11:51PM on 8-03-2006
Nice name.
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Bruce Anderson said 12:01AM on 8-04-2006
Unfortunately for the developer, I find nothing whatsoever inconvenient about downloading the video and dropping it into iSquint.
If you on the other hand would rather pay $15, please go right ahead. If it were $5 I MIGHT consider it, but $15 is WAY too much. For another $8 I can get MediaHub which does a LOT more (though of course you still have to load the YouTube videos manually). I'll save my money for more important stuff. :)
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Wry Cooter said 12:59AM on 8-04-2006
My current YouTube workflow.
Read source of page (usually it is an embedded link in someones blog) to get URL of YouTube Video.
Go To KeepVid
Change syntax of URL to match syntax of KeepVid suggestion.
Enter URL.
Once given new download link, download gawdawful Flash Video.
Bring the .flv file to iSquint to convert to something decent and useful
I am not that concerned about iTunes>iPod workflow, am equally interested in merely viewing on my notebook, in QuickTime, or perhaps, converting to a PSP format.
I simply refuse to watch a real time stream of something that can be choked by bandwidth and web traffic.
I hope this gizmo at least makes the workflow of merely downloading and converting the youtube vide take as few steps as possible.
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William Sun said 2:16AM on 8-04-2006
I already use the javimoya.com website to convert online videos such as YouTube and iSquint to convert... And that's for free. I don't feel there's anything wrong with the method I and others use so I'll stick with that until I feel the need to convert to TubeSock.
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Raz said 4:46AM on 8-04-2006
Geez you people who always moan about shareware prices really annoy me. $5? Gimme a break, that means he has to sell 3x as many copies to make the same amount of cash, and no, lower prices don't automatically make sales scale like that. Some people want to make a living selling Mac software, sure it's nice to have a bit of freeware, but without people making and buying shareware apps you wouldn't have nearly the diversity or quality of applications you see on the Mac today.
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Liam Parkinson said 8:09AM on 8-04-2006
Completly agree with you Raz :-) I just dont mind watching the video's of the internet, never been chocked or anything and im only on a 4meg connection (nearly 500k/sec download i get) and i know for a fact over there in the states the internet speeds are alot higher, so whats the point? Most people have access to the internet all the time.
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mike said 9:29AM on 8-04-2006
download with youtubex.com
play with vlc
convert with isquint
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Jeff said 9:51AM on 8-04-2006
The reason I won't pay is because I don't want to pay for something that is closed source and has the chance of being dropped if the developer feels like moving on to something else. If he makes it open source, I'd have a better feeling about giving him money for his effort knowing that even if he gives up on it, the project would remain alive.
Its pretty similar to why I won't buy DRM music. I want to know that the music I buy can be played how I want it to be played. I only buy CD's. To me, CD's are open. DRM is not.
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Adam said 12:13PM on 8-04-2006
Personally, I like the Firefox plugin called "video downloader" (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/) simply because it works on YouTube, and about 60 other streaming video sites. And best of all, it's free!
After that, like almost everyone else, I dump it into iSquint, and the rest is history...
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Skids said 1:10PM on 8-04-2006
I've been thinking of how to make a program similar to this - ideally, it would download the latest videos from break.com or youtube or wherever, convert and dump them onto your ipod video. Since I'm just learning to program, it's beyond me. Could it be done with Automator? Any suggestions?
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Falsoman said 1:13PM on 8-04-2006
I download youtube videos from http://video.qooqle.jp
but i'll try the other the comenters have mentioned.
thanks =)
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Sinkbot said 4:21PM on 8-04-2006
Hey, I'm the developer of TubeSock. Thanks to everyone for the interesting comments. I wrote the app because someone asked me how to save YouTube videos to their iPod, and I described the steps (as summarized by posters above), and they acted like I was explaining how to build I carburetor. Some people don't like having to figure stuff out. Or they like the convenience factor. I've grabbed a lot more videos now that I have TubeSock. But if you like doing it another way, do what you like.
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Thorsten von Plotho-Kettner said 5:26PM on 8-07-2006
I really like that app and I am so short at the frontier to buy :) I like the smooth way dealing with youtube-films and as I am a mac-head I reylly like not to be forced hacking stuff like at my openbsd-times ..... so downloading, converting and so on is not manually done by me....... and the price is okay for that handy piece of software :D
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