Jul 8, 2011

Tutorial : Move YouTube videos to your iPOD

My techie friends pardon me for posting something trivial but few days back a colleague at work asked me how do I download a video from YouTube on my iPOD or any other player for that matter. The fact is it is pretty straight forward though for the uninitiated it might look like a difficult task as there is no direct "Save" button available.

Just in case before I explain how it works - I would like to say that am not a piracy advocate. There are thousands of videos which are legal to download and thousands which aren't. It is possible to download any video but please use your own judgement or check with the owner to save your self any piracy troubles.

Past that gibberish, iPOD any  general or your iPhone supports mp4 format. iTunes recognizes the format and if a file is encoded as MP4 it will play the video.

Step I:  Identify your video.

I will use a video from Coke Studio promo. By the way you are allowed to download the video from the coke studio website as long as you agree to their terms and conditions which are reasonable.
Click on the video and it will open in YouTube and copy the link in the address bar.(Click any picture for bigger size)


Step II: Visit http://keepvid.com/ and paste the link you have just grabbed.


Paste the URL copied from the YouTube addressed bar and pate it in the text box just before the DOWNLOAD button and the following prompt will come up.

Click "Run" and the following screen options come up.
Notice the option with MP4 and click the corresponding link to download the file as an MP4 file which can be sent to your iPOD in the usual manner like any other video file.



Step III: Cheers and enjoy your video. There is no step III.

It is possible to download file in multiple formats. 3GP is a popular format for mobile phones.In case you are interested in just extracting the audio - select the MP3 option and you are done.

Jul 1, 2011

Now Reading: What the dog saw

Book Review: Lila


Lila: An Inquiry Into MoralsLila: An Inquiry Into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not as thought provoking as the Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance but if you think about what he talks about it is indeed a beautiful book to read. Pirsig has this uncanny ability to make you read a page and take a walk into your head.


View all my reviews

"Lila, as was its predecessor, is an intellectual rebel's book, a loner's book - the writing of a thoughtful, sensitive social and cultural observer who has had his fill of academic pretentiousness and phoniness, not to mention the arrogance of our various secular experts." - Washington Post

And for the first time I didn't feel they were just writing reviews to sell books.