Another iPod How To - Video Time

You like Japanese dramas but don’t live in Japan? You like British dramas but live in Japan? (You can watch Doctor Who on BS1 you know.) You like American dramas that aren’t ER or Monk and you live in Japan? You’re someone who wants to watch Namie Amuro dance while she sings about not wanting to do boring things? Or maybe, just maybe, you’re a law abiding citizen who only wants to watch some good old fashioned Japanese related documentaries from the Internet Archive on the go? Perhaps it’s time you fully owned that little slab of electronics with the Apple logo on the back.

I have to admit, I find watching videos on the iPod kind of pointless, unless I’m on a long journey somewhere with no access to a bigger screen. I do, however, still put video on my iPod, just because watching things on the TV is so much better than on a computer screen.

Here’s the first tip before we get into the geekery - if you don’t have an Apple TV out lead, you can use any A/V lead (red, yellow, white plugs at one end, 3.5mm jack at the other). The secret is to connect them up wrong:

* Plug the red RCA plug into your TV’s yellow RCA jack.
* Plug the yellow RCA plug into your TV’s white RCA jack.
* Plug the white RCA plug into your TV’s red RCA jack.

Learned this from O’Reilly MacDev Center

Of course, this should really be the last step. It just happens to be the simplest. We’ll get properly stuck in, after the jump.

You might already know some of this, so I’ve made up a quick list of contents -

Finding videos
Downloading from sites like YouTube
Encoding Downloaded video
The easy way to download and encode - although the quality isn’t as hot
The final step
Other sites referenced in this article

STEP one - Getting videos

There are lots of places you can get videos on the internet, something I’m sure you’re all aware of. I mentioned the Internet Archive earlier on, and they are indeed a great resource - take a peek here for a quick search on Japan. There’s a couple of things in there that grabbed my interest, but everyone is different. You’ll have to find what you like yourself.

Then there’s new kid on the block, Veoh, who were recently mentioned on Japundit, where Alex Pappas gave some great links to Japanese dramas available at Veoh. I’d also add the entire series of Full Metal Alchemist. The only problem with Veoh is that you have to download their Veoh player to download videos. (You can watch online, although that’s not really what we’re after in this How To.)

So now we’re in more complex territory - the videos you can’t download.

Simplistic’s Movie Links harvests YouTube links so you can watch whole films.

PeekVid does something similar, but they also include TV series in their repertoire. (NB: they don’t always use YouTube.)

What connects these two sites? YouTube, the grandaddy of online content - in some ways. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the image quality you usually get there, but it’s a moot point if its the only place you can watch Namie Amuro videos.

I can hear someone screaming that you can’t download from YouTube, so what’s the point?

Well, you can. And the solution to that problem comes with the bonus of allowing you to download from Google Video so you don’t have to use the Google player.

STEP two - Found something I like, now what?

I know there’s some people out there who refuse to use Firefox, just because it feels like bandwagon jumping. Sorry, you’re going to need it now. Personally, I love it. It’s so customizable. Which is why it is essential for this stage.

The easiest way to download from YouTube and Google Video requires a bit of setup… Woah! Relax. Not that much.
i.) Install Greasemonkey, by going here.
ii.) Install the Greasemonkey YouTube script by going here

(NB: this should work, but I haven’t done this for a long time. There may be an extra step missing - installing the Greasemonkey extension - which you can find out how to do by going here

Once you restart firefox, go to YouTube, and shazam! Every video should have a nice red bar at the top, and the words ‘Right Click Save As’. All you need to do now is right click, select save as, select file type as all files and type the filename in, making sure you finish up with .flv
(The same thing should happen with Google, although it’ll be a blue notification in the right column saying ‘Get Flash Video’.)

Now, there are other options. I just like this one because I don’t have to open another site to download the video. If you don’t mind doing that, there’s another extension available for Firefox - VideoDownloader. It puts an icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Firefox screen, that you can click on to download videos from the site you’re on.

There is another option available, and I’ll bring it up after we talk about encoding.

STEP three - Got the video I wanted! But it won’t play on my iPod. Or my computer?!

Yeah. I know. The codec used by YouTube and Google video is flv, which produces some pretty ordinary looking videos. Its also hardly used, hence no-one has sexy flash video viewers on their computers. The next thing you have to do is convert that video into something your iPod can comprehend, or, if you don’t have an iPod, something your computer can understand.

For this, I recommend SUPER. Super is a gorgeous piece of software that converts pretty much any video type into any other video type. It does sometimes go a bit buggy, as it requires a lot of RAM, so if you’re using it, close everything else. The best thing to do is to load it up with a heap of files before bedtime and let it ride through the night. (Only problem with this being that it still might hit a snag, and you’ll be greeted at breakfast with a polite enquiry about what Super should do next. And it’ll be at the 1% mark of your video. *Sob*) It’s perfect at what it does though, 90% of the time. There are other options - take a look at this page - feel free to use them if you prefer, but SUPER does it for me. You can get it at this site which is appallingly laid out - you have to go to the bottom of the second page to find a download link. (Baffling. But free. So I’ll quit whining.)

Once you have SUPER installed, you just drag files into the box at the bottom, select the iPod profile, and press start. Bingo. You might also want to right click, and change the output folder to something identifiable, but aside from that, it really is that easy. You could also use SUPER to encode videos from Veoh, I imagine - I haven’t actually tried this yet.

So, we’ve covered downloading and encoding and now you’re going to hate me when I tell you there is a really easy way to download and encode online videos, with very little effort on your part. Vixy’s Online FLV converter does the job of grabbing the videos you want, and encoding them, before you save them to your computer.

So why didn’t I tell you before? Well, because I’ve used this a couple of times, and I think the picture quality wasn’t as good as the time consuming process. If you were going to upscale on to the TV, the image probably wouldn’t be as clear as if you’d gone via the blood, sweat and tears method. I may have just been unlucky with my choice of video.(Christina Aguilera, Dirty…*ahem*)

STEP four - put ‘em on your iPod and away you go!

I have to say, I have yet to find an easier way to put videos on my iPod than through iTunes. In fact, I haven’t even found a more difficult way… Tell you what, after I’ve done something productive today, I’ll look into MediaMonkey’s video plugin and see how that fares. I use MediaMonkey for about 95% of my iPod synchro needs, so maybe it’ll see me right with videos too.

Stay tuned.

Things I linked to in this article, in chronological order :

Cheap TV out cable alternative from O’Reilly MacDev Center
Japan related downloads on the Internet Archive
Veoh
Japundit’s article on Veoh
The entire series of Full Metal Alchemist at Veoh
Simplistic’s Movie Links
PeekVid
YouTube
Google Video
Get Greasemonkey
Get Greasemonkey video downloading script
Lifehack.org’s article on Greasemonkey Extension
VideoDownloader Plugin for Firefox
Another article on getting videos from the internet - Gil’s Method
Get SUPER
Vixy’s Online FLV converter
MediaMonkey

(There’s so much stuff out there! If this wasn’t enough, go forth and Google!)

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Saturday, January 13th, 2007 How to..., Sushimatic Loves..., Things To Do, iPod Trackback URL for this entry