YouTube/Video grabbing sites/programs

Different Video Sites:

* YouTube
* Archive.org
* Google Videos
* Islamic Tube
* God Tube
* Jew Tube
* Hindu Tube
* East African Tube
* Native American Tube

etc...you get the point. The list goes on and on.

So you found your cool and interesting videos to curate. Now what? Well, there's:

• YouTube Playlist
• If you don't feel like dealing with downloading and editing YouTube videos, you can create a playlist in your YouTube account to organize a bunch of videos and play them all in order
• You'll find this under Accounts (you must create one) --> Manage My Videos --> Videos, Favorites, and Playlists --> Create Playlist (on left side)
  
• Once you've created a playlist, when you see a video you like, under the video click "add to playlists" and find the one you added
• You can customize your playlist and play every video in sequence
• You can also get an embed code if you want to upload the video sequence to the class blog

or (if you want to use videos not in YouTube and want to edit the videos)...

• SnapzPro (takes a video screen shot of whatever you put the box around)
• Download trial version (lasts 30 days) for Macs (sorry PC people!)
  
• Open snapzpro in Applications OR hold down command (apple key) + shift + 3
  
• click on 'movie'
• make sure only thing checked is "Mac Audio Track"
  
• If you want betterish quality, change the frames per second (fps) to 30 rather than 10
  
• size the box around movie box (such as youtube video box)
  
• double click in the box to start screen shot, invisible man says "Action!"
  
• start playing your YouTube video (or other)
• when finished, stop recording by holding down command + shift + 3 again (invisible man will say "CUT!")
• find quicktime movie on desktop

SnapzPro is cool because it captures video clips from any video playing on your screen, from any site. It is also cool because it makes the movie into a quicktime file (.mov) rather than a flash video (.flv) which you would otherwise have to convert to .mov, so you can just open your file right away in a video editing program! There are instructions on the linked SnapzPro site too.

or

• YouTube Video Grabber
  
• This is also for Macs. You just download the program, open it, and paste the YouTube url into the place that says "youtube url" at the top
• Click "get url"
  
• At the bottom of the box look for where it says "convert to" and change to .MP4 (mpeg4 is slightly better than .mov but both work)
• Change to 30 fps for better quality
• Change video size to 640x480 (for better quality)
  
• Click "convert FLV"
  

YouTube Video Grabber is nice because it both downloads YouTube videos AND converts them to a usable format all in one.

or

• video download tool
  
• Paste video url from YouTube
  
• click "get video"
• You will now have a .flv file, which you need to convert to .mov or .mp4 using the next program:
  
• Convert .flv to .mov or .mp4
• you don't need to download anything for this; just find your .flv file on your computer and choose 'flash video' from the 'input format' drop down menu
• under 'output format' choose .mov or .mp4

These two tools are backups if youtube video grabber doesn't work, but it's two steps, which is sort of annoying. The plus side is that you don't have to download programs. There are hundreds of tools and programs such as these online and I just suggested these few.

PC users! Sorry! I'm sure there are lots of programs like these for PCs, so just google and look for them. I couldn't test any out because I don't have a PC. Anyone feel free to come to the Cloisters and use our computers with huge hard drives and download away!

After you have all your .mov or .mp4 files, you can import them into iMovie or Final Cut Pro. I'll post on basics of Final Cut Pro soon.

Hope this helps!

Let me know if you have questions/comments/additions. I work in the Media Cloisters:
Monday 3-5
Tuesday 2-5
Thursday 2-5
Friday 2-4

or email brkaplan@vassar.edu

-Brittany