Friday, January 27, 2012

Keeping YouTube Videos

During my weekly meeting with Deb P. in Grade 1, we played with a website called "Save YouTube". Since our school's firewall blocks YouTube, she wanted to grab a few videos she found on YouTube displaying the Aurora Borealis to share with her students during class. The video at right is uses TimeLapse photography and was put together by Brian Maffit.

Save YouTube sucks the video down from the internet and saves it to your computer. There's lots of other sites that do this, too, like KeepVid, but this one is working well for now. Here's what you need to do to use it. Keep in mind, you need to do this at home or talk to the TechTeam about a super secret way of accessing YouTube at school.
  1. Find a video on YouTube that you want to grab. Copy the URL (web address) of the page with the video.
  2. Open another tab (Command-T) in your web browser and go to the Save YouTube site (http://saveyoutube.com). Paste the URL into the big box at the top of the page and click "download."
  3. The first time you acces the site, you may get a pop-up that asks if an applet can run on your computer. Press "Allow." It's OK.
  4. It will try and validate the address to make sure it's real, then you will choose the download format. Pick the highest quality .mp4 version you can. You will see numbers like 720p or 320p...the higher the number, the bigger and better quality of video you will get. Don't download an .flv file. Those are in the Flash format and harder to deal with. Plus, if you wanted to put the video on your iOS gadget...it won't display.
  5. The video will appear in your Downloads folder. Now it's yours forever. Don't forget to give credit to the videographers!

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