YouTube offers an interesting and luxurious method of watching videos online for free. Companies can use YouTube to market their upcoming products and services while schools can use it to host seminars or other educational videos. Bands and celebrities can use YouTube to get the word out about their latest music or appearances while politicians can use the service to reach their voters and explain exactly what is they are all about. YouTube even has a variety of embedding options to share videos on other social networks such as Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. Unfortunately, YouTube does not offer a solution for users to put their favorite videos on their iPods. This article will explore another route for completing that task.
Video Capture Software
The first step to putting YouTube videos on an iPod is to use a video capture software or service to download the video in question. Video capture software allows the user to type in the URL, or web address, of a specific video and download it to his or her computer without any technical knowledge or advanced computer skills. Most video capture services simply rely on one click of a button to snatch the video from YouTube and download it to the user's computer in one or more different formats. The following is a list of video capture services that allow the user to download YouTube videos.
KeepVid
KeepVid is probably the most popular video capture service on the Internet as it is incredibly easy to use and is completely free. KeepVid only requires that the user enter the URL of the video in question and then click on the "Download" button. KeepVid will only download YouTube videos and does not work on any other video site. KeepVid downloads videos in .flv format.
DownloadYouTubeVideo.org
DownloadYouTubeVideo.org works in much the same way that KeepVid does and only requires the user to enter the URL of the video and click "Download". The website also features an actual program, however, called Download Videos Pro that will allow the user to download videos from a wide variety of websites simply by visiting those sites. Once again, this site downloads YouTube videos in .flv format.
GetVideoMP3.com
GetVideoMP3.com allows the user to download videos from YouTube by entering the web address and clicking on the "Download" button. Unlike other video capture services, however, GetVideoMP3.com allows the user to download YouTube videos in either .flv or .mp4 format. The service allows includes an MP3 converter that allows the user download videos directly to MP3 file format but it does require that the user fill out a short survey first.
VideoDownloadX.com
VideoDownloadX.com allows the user to download YouTube videos in .flv, .mp4, or .mp3 file formats by entering the URL in the appropriate field and clicking the subsequent button. VideoDownloadX.com also allows the user to download a video directly to another site in order to share it. Unfortunately, VideoDownloadX.com requires that the user fill out a short survey for a 14 day access to the website.
VideoDownloader
VideoDownloader is a program that can integrate itself into the user's browser to allow the user to download videos as he or she wishes. VideoDownloader works with YouTube as well as all other major video hosting sites. The software also allows the user to choose which format the video is downloaded in and can download videos in almost any video format.
Zamzar
Zamzar is first and foremost a file converting service but it also allows the user to download videos from video hosting sites such as YouTube. Zamzar also allows the user to choose which format the file is converted to as it is being downloaded and includes a long list of roughly 80-90 different file formats. Zamzar hosts the file for a certain amount of time and emails the file link to the user's email address where he/she can download the file.
ITunes
Once the video has been downloaded by using one of the previously mentioned video capture programs, the file needs to be converted to MP4 and synchronized with the user's iPod. ITunes does all of this in one swift motion and was specifically designed for putting files on iPods. All the user needs to do to transfer his/her videos over to their iPod is import the file into the iTunes library by browsing for it and then synchronize the library with the iPod. The synchronization takes a few moments but if everything is done correctly, the video should appear on the iPod.
