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Downloading YouTube videos to Your iPod
The iPod is a great device for consuming just about any type of media around. Things get even better when an outstanding media device meets an outstanding media service. Such is YouTube. However, in many cases users would like to download videos from YouTube. The reason for wanting to do so may vary:
● WiFi or 3G Internet is not always available, and if you want to watch videos while offline, you will need to download them.
● Great videos are often removed from YouTube if they infringe on someone's intellectual property (and other imaginary property). In other words, if your favorite videos violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or other similar acts, they will eventually be taken offline.
● You may have a collection of videos on one topic that you want to keep in one place.
In all these cases, you would want to download videos from YouTube. Although, doing so is not really officially encouraged and supported by Google, you can download them right to your iPod. Let's take a look how one can download YouTube videos to the iPod.
The Computer-Aided Way
There are multiple ways to download YouTube videos to a Mac or a PC. There are several Firefox browser plugins dedicated to doing just that, not to mention all kinds of utilities and online services designed with that aim in mind. These tools are so numerous that you will find dozens of them by performing a simple Google search.
Some of these tools have a built-in converter to make your videos iPod-friendly. If a YouTube downloader tool does not convert videos to MP4 right away and keeps them in FLV format, you can use any decent converter on either a Mac or a PC. We advise using a free program called HandBrake for such a job.
All you have to do after converting video is upload it to the iPod using iTunes, and that is the quite easy part. In a nutshell, this way of downloading videos to the iPod boils down to following simple steps:
1.) Download the YouTube video to your PC or Mac
2.) Convert the video to an iPod-friendly format
3.) Use iTunes to download the video onto your iPod
Using App Store Applications
Sometimes a computer is not available, and you just want to download these YouTube videos with the iPod. In this case, there are some great apps in the App Store that will help you out. We recommend a couple of them:
Download Manager Lite — A quite simple application that allows you to download video content from many video sites including YouTube. It is not quite clear how this application manages to not get kicked out of the App Store, but somehow, it works.
iWoopie — A great application for downloading videos that is unfortunately out of the game. After it was removed from the App Store, it returned only with the downloading functionality removed. Now, it is more of an application for searching and viewing videos.
Cydia Video Download Apps
Cydia, an alternative App Store for jailbroken iPods, becomes handy in many situations, especially when you're doing something that big corporations do not want you to do. Do you want to download YouTube videos, and Apple and Google do not allow this? - some Cydia apps might help you with that as well:
MxTube — This app enables users to download YouTube videos. Sometimes, however, it crashes.
aTube Video Downloader — An app that allows for searching and downloading YoutTube videos. It allows you to view videos before downloading them and also allows you to download several YouTube videos simultaneously.
These applications deserve a separate review, and you should only install if you know what jailbreaking is, what kinds of risks it brings, and why you need to jailbreak your iPod.
Web Services
There are whole bunch of web services centered around the YouTube web service (pun intended). Each of these online resources has different functions. We just need those that can convert and download YouTube videos. We would advise that you try the following:
● http://www.ytconv.com/ - A decent YouTube video downloader/converter
● http://www.videodl.org/ - An online video downloading service that suppors major video sites like YouTube and Google Video.
● http://www.mediaconverter.org/ - One of the most advanced sites for downloading and converting web videos. It allows you to convert videos on the go and provides advanced options like selecting audio and video codecs, resolution, and bitrates of the video you wish to download.
While writing this review, we have noticed that video downloading services tend to be quite temporary. In other words, their lifespan is usually very short. So, by the time you read this article, they may have disappeared. Thus, while jailbreaking and various other online services provide you some freedom to download YouTube videos, the first method we have described in this article (using your desktop or laptop computer as an intermediary to download and convert videos) is still the most reliable method.
