Video Ripping And Converting Made Easy

It’s not difficult to grab a video from Youtube.  It’s simplest, I think, in Safari.  Just load the video’s page (completely), then choose “Activity” from the “Window” menu.  There you’ll see a list of files that loaded to create that page.  Select the largest one (that’s the video), copy it’s location, paste it into the address bar of your browser and the video will download to your computer.  BUT – and it’s a big but – the file will be a .flv file.  That’s a flash movie and it’s pretty useless for most of us.

Flv files can be converted to more usable file formats like .mov or .avi but that takes time and another program.  You’re too lazy…I mean busy for that right?

You could try Podtube, which works for my friend Brody…when he needs to swipe someone else’s video, make a few strategic and highly sarcastic edits and repost it to his blog, generating thousands of hits.  But, for me, and maybe for you, it won’t work so well.  I even paid to upgrade from the demo to the full version and still can’t get a single video to download.

Never fear video rippers.  Now there’s Vixy.net.  In a few seconds you can rip video from a site (not just Youtube) in one of several formats you choose.  And it’s easy.  Just go to Vixy.net, paste in the url of the page containing the video you want, select the format you want the video in and Vixy.net does the ripping and converting for you…for free.

Got a better way?  Please share it.