Put YouTube Videos On Your iPod/PSP/Zune

We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me ‘earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot.
Drink up me ‘earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate’s life for me.
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate’s life for me.
–Unknown, A Pirate’s Life For Me

So you want to take all of those videos that you’ve been watching repeatedly on You Tube (or any other site that hosts embedded video) and put them on your iPod so that you take them with you wherever you go? Hmmm… well I just might be able to help you out with that.

Now let me warn you ahead of time that this could be used in an illegal manner which could ultimately result in in piracy. We here at The Restricted in no way advocate any illegal activity and do not endorse piracy in any way shape or form. There are however legitimate reasons for wanting to do this. So if you want to take those family videos that you sister in Arizona uploaded to You Tube and share them with your grandmother who lives down the street from you in downtown Afgan-er-fuck-eragua; this would be perfect for you!

First off you’re going to need a few things (all readily available for free on the internet):

1. Firefox internet browser
2. The Video DownloadHelper extension for Firefox
3. 3GP Video Converter

The first thing you’re going to need to do,(if you haven’t already) is download Mozillia’s Firefox internet browser and install it. Once you’ve done that you’ll need to add on the DownloadHelper extension, either by clicking the link provided or by going into the tools tab, clicking extensions, hitting the “Get More Extensions” button, and searching for it on the Firefox site.

At this point you’re going to need to close Firefox and open it back up again so that the DownloadHelper extension will load.

After you’ve done all that use Firefox to visit the page that has the video you want, click tools, hover your pointer over DownloadHelper, and if there are any videos on that page to download they will show up in the submenu. Simply click on the file you want and Firefox will save it your hard drive. It’s important to note that the file will be saved as an FLV file, this is pretty much useless to most people because you can’t even double click on it and play it at this point. (Take note of where DownloadHelper is saving your file to, the default is: C:\Documents and Settings\USER NAME\dwhelper.)

The next thing you need to do is download and install the 3GP Video Converter. This is going to be the hardest part of the whole process (and it’s not even that complicated), but the good news is that you only have to do it once.

1. Open 3GP for the first time
2. From the drop down menu select a language (English).

3. From the codexes in the top window select the one you want to use. I prefer Model: MP4, for PSP even if I am putting them on my iPod because it just simply offers more options when it comes to choosing your settings.

4. Click Apply
5. Next you need to select the quality of compression for both the video and audio. I find that QVGA/15fps/512kbps Stereo/96 kbps is more than adequate for me. Again, that’s just a personal preference, but keep in mind that flash video already runs at a rate of 15fps so going higher on the frame rate is kind of pointless).

6. Pick a destination folder for the finished product by clicking the Browse button and choosing a folder (the default is to place it on your desktop).

7. Open up Windows Explorer, drag and drop the FLV file into the “Drag&Drop file here” window on 3GP and wait for the finished product. This shouldn’t take too long because there‘s really not a whole lot of conversion going on; it only took about 20 seconds for me to do a 7 minute video

All that’s left at this point is to load the video onto your iPod, PSP, Zune, or other portable video device, run down to Grandma’s house, and show her that cute video of little Tiffany blasting Uncle Mike in the ol’ nut hammock with a baseball bat while she was trying to bust the piñata at her birthday party last week. Careful not to give Granny a heart attack!