Syndicated newspaper columnist and internet marketing guy
Jim Edwards reports today on
two free tools for converting internet videos for viewing on your portable device.
flv to iPod from DVDVideoSoft lets you capture YouTube videos and convert them to play locally on your portable device, while
Vixy.net is an online conversion service (currently in beta version) that allows you to point to a URL and then converts the video stream on-the-fly. Acording to Jim the only drawback with Vixy is that it is pretty slow due to bandwidth throttling.
[...]
Virtually all online video sites stream their videos in FLV (Flash Video) format, a format that works very well on both PC
and Mac computers over the Web.
Unfortunately, the FLV file format does not work on most portable video players, so you need a way to convert them to a
file format that will work.
DVDVideoSoft.com offers a free PC software program that will convert YouTube.com videos to MP4 format for use on your iPod
or other portable devices, including mobile phones.
Log onto the site, look for the link that says "FLVto iPod" (currently in the lower right corner of the front page) and
follow the instructions.
I found the software simple, easy-to-use and straight to the point with an intuitive interface (that means you can figure out
how to use it without reading the instructions).
Vixy.net - Online Conversions
Vixy.net is an online service (currently in beta) offering online video conversion for both PC and Mac since it works
through a standard web browser.
Just give the site the URL of the FLV video you want to convert, choose the format you want (AVI, MP4, 3GP, MOV, or MP3
audio-only) and click the button.
Once Vixy.net finishes converting, they give you a link to download the file.
My only complaint with Vixy.net is that they "throttle" their bandwidth, so it took forever to download the converted file.
Other than that, it worked like a charm!
