Say Hello to Flash
Perhaps the most important and earth-shattering use of Flash on the Web – aside from terrible animated site intros – is the revolution Flash video caused on YouTube. Thanks to Flash, video on the Web finally went from from tiny, postage-stamp-sized jittery slideshows which never quite worked, to becoming a real part of the Web experience.
Goodbye, Flash
But fortunately, standards move forward, and now, there’s no more need for Flash to watch video on YouTube.
Thanks to Apple’s latest Safari 5 browser, and a handy free extension, you can not only view any video quickly and seamlessly, you can download whatever size is available, drag it into iTunes, and have it playing on your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch iOS device in minutes.
No conversion required. Yes, it’s really that simple.
Say Hello to h.264
Everything changed when YouTube adopted h.264 as a parallel standard for YouTube.
You don’t really need to know all that – you just need to know that when Apple released the iPhone in 2007, Flash was not a part of it, but a fancy YouTube app was. At first, only a selection of YouTube videos was available in the new format for viewing on the iPhone. But gradually, the standard took over, and now every video is available simultaneously in h.264 format on iOS devices, and through the Flash player on personal computers.
Changing of the Platform
Connor McKay, on his great site “Vertical Forest,” has just released a phenomenal extension for Safari called YouTube5. Basically, you can load it into the Safari 5 browser, go to YouTube, and see every video without Flash.
And, more importantly, if you own an iOS device, you can copy whichever size of the video you want, drag it into iTunes, and then onto your device for watching on the go.
Let’s Extend Your Safari
Ready to watch your videos on the go, without having to worry whether you have an unreliable AT&T connection, or WiFi?
Follow these steps to take control of your YouTube video watching: (These steps are basically the same, regardless whether you’re on a Mac or PC computer.)
If you’re not already there, fire up Safari (if you don’t already have it, you can download Safari from the Apple site here), and then head over to the YouTube5 Extension page on Connor McKay’s Vertical Forest site.
Scroll down until you see this:
Click on the link labeled “download YouTube5 here,” and you’ll see this:
Click on “Save,” and then the YouTube5 extension will download quickly.
Once it’s downloaded, go to the “Downloads” window if it’s not already visible by clicking “Control-Alt-L” on a PC, or “Command-Option-L” on a Mac.
Now, double-click the downloaded extension in the downloads window, and you’ll see this:
Of course, choose “Install.”
A New YouTube Experience
Now, when you head back to YouTube, you’ll see a new player – focus on the bottom of the video window – see how the player looks different?
Notice how the player looks different, with blue marking video already played...
Grabbing the Video
Notice the small “i” in the upper right hand corner of the video now? Just click that, and you’ll see a selection of the sizes in which the video is now available for download.
Right click the one you want to save, and select “Download linked file as,” as shown here:
All videos are called “videoplayback.mp4″ by default – you’ll probably want to change that name to something more meaningful.
(Make sure you don’t change the .mp4 extension!)
Save the file to your desktop, and then wait for it to download. Depending on the quality/size you’ve chosen, it could take a while to download the complete video.
Because I download these videos myself to view on my iPhone, I usually choose 360p, which is fine for iOS device use.
Once the file has downloaded, I drag the video file into iTunes. The key is that there’s no need to convert it, as it’s already in the proper format for viewing on your computer, and on all iOS devices.
By default, it will appear in the “Movies” area of your iTunes library. Right-click to “Get Info” on the file, and then change the title to something more understandable for yourself.
Now just connect your iOS device, and drag the file over and sync it.
That’s it – a pretty simple set of steps, and you can gain control over when to watch the video you want to see!
Please let me know if you have any questions or problems in the comments below..
Update
Just finished up a brief video stepping you through the above steps, for those who prefer to watch & listen…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
If you download movies via Safari it’s rather difficult to separate out various flash flies from the ads and the .swfs and to pick the right one. So it’s better to use YouTube downloader. For example Elmedia Player PRO, which supports HTML5 video downloading too (http://mac.eltima.com/youtube-downloader-mac.html)
Anna – In my experience, this method pretty much eliminates other files, as you’re downloading exactly the file you want. It’s a bit slow & buggy, but it’s hard to beat the fact that you’re skipping an entire additional transcoding step.