Download YouTube videos with ease for playback on, well, anything.
There are tons of great videos on YouTube, in fact there are more videos uploaded every hour than it would be possible to watch.
Chances are you won’t want to watch all of them, but the ones that you do want to watch you’ll probably want to see over and over. That can be a pain if you have a slow Internet condition or have a download limit.
Luckily, Enolsoft are here to help with a simple app that allows you to download any YouTube video for playback on your Mac whenever you like.
The process is simple enough; just copy the URL of your selected YouTube video into the application window and watch as the app downloads it into the downloads folder on your Mac.
The downloaded file will be a Flash video (.FLV), which Quicktime can’t play by default, but you can also convert to a variety of different file formats depending on what type of device you want to play your file on.
By default videos are converted to MP4 files using the H.264 codec. These files will playback on any Mac, as well as playing on devices such as the iPhone and iPad without any additional conversion.
Conversion only takes a few minutes (seeing as YouTube videos are usually less than ten minutes), though HD videos will take longer to convert than standard definition ones.
The resulting videos are pretty much identical to the original YouTube versions, though file sizes are sometimes a little bigger than the original Flash version.
We transferred a few Tech Made Easy YouTube videos to an iPad and we couldn’t tell any difference in terms of quality between the original YouTube version and the converted file that the app churned out.
Conclusions
If you’re looking for a tool to capture YouTube videos on your Mac then there’s not a lot of options out there. There a couple of plugins available for various browsers, but their effectiveness varies and results can be a little poor.
Enolsoft YouTube Converter HD on the other hand offers a simple to use interface, flawless file conversion and excellent compatibility with external devices.
The list of supported file types means that you should be able to convert online videos to play back on any games console, mobile phone, PC, Mac, tablet PC, or anything really.
All of the guess work is taken out of the equation by providing you with specific presets for a whole bunch of devices from various manufacturers. You don’t need to know what types of file your device can play; Enolsoft have done the work for you.
One final comment: the legality of downloading and converting most YouTube videos is pretty complex. After all, most major artists now release their music videos via YouTube and the content held there remains property of the artist and storing a copy for playback at a later date is a tricky one.
On YouTube these videos are supported by advertising, but when you download them you bypass the advertising and get your own copy of the video.
That being said, this is still a great product and well worth the asking price of $29
