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This step-by-step guide by PhonPhun will show you how to save movies from YouTube (or many other video-hosting sites, such as Google Video and flurl) and convert them so that you can watch them on your cell phone!
0. Tools of the trade
What we need to download movies from YouTube is the Mozilla FireFox web browser and its Fast Video Download plug-in (you can find here the links to download them); then we will use SUPER (click here for the download link) to convert the movies in a mobile phone compatible format.
1. How to save movies from YouTube
If you haven't done it yet, install Mozilla FireFox; then, launch it and open the Fast Video Download web page. Scroll down the page and click on the Install now button.
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If nothing happens, and in the upper part of the page you see a bar like the one below:
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then press the Edit Options... button; in the Allowed Sites - Software Installation window check that the Address of web site field is filled with the addons.mozilla.org value and press the Allow button.
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FireFox is now allowed to download add-ons from this site; close the window by pressing the Close button.
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Click again on the Install now button: the Software Installation window with the Fast Video Download add-on should pop-up.
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Press the Install Now button: the window will notify you of the successful installation.
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Close the Extensions window and restart FireFox (that is, close all open windows and launch it again) to complete installation.
When the Fast Video Download add-on is installed, it will show an icon in the lower-right corner of FireFox window:
You can now visit YouTube and view the movie you wish to download; when the video page has finished loading and the movie is playing, click on the Fast Video Download icon in the lower-left corner of FireFox window: Fast Video Download will show the Save as download window to save the movie (in FLV format).
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Once the download is completed, the movie is saved on your hard drive and ready to be converted to be played on your cell phone!
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2. How to convert movies
To convert the movies you have downloaded, install SUPER and launch it.
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As a start, you can set the default folder where SUPER saves the convertd movies: right-click on the program window and in the pop-up menu select the Specify The Output Folder Destination item.
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Use the tree view in the Browse to save the rendered file? window to browse your directories, highlight the folder of your choice and press the SAVE Changes button.
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From an Explorer window drag&drop the .flv file downloaded by Fast Video Download into SUPER window and set the audio/video parameters as shown in the picture below:
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The 3GPP format and the parameter values have been chosen in order to create movie files that can be played with as many devices as possible (for example, even though they are not mentioned in the list, even SonyEricsson phones can playback files created with these settings); you should also bear in mind that video quality has been preferred over small file size with these settings.
If your cell phone supports additional audio or video codings or additional file formats (such as MP4), you can change the settings accordingly and make some tests: for example, AMR Narrow-Band codec does not guarantee acceptable audio quality (especially for audio clips), so if you can you should use AMR Wide-Band or AAC audio codecs instead.
Now press the Encode (Active Job-List Files) button to start the conversion.
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Once the conversion is complete, the .3gp movie file is ready to be played on your cell phone!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.
This work can be redistributed and modified for non-commercial purposes only, and with proper attribution to the original source (http://phonphun.altervista.org/); please follow the link above for further information and the complete license.
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