In this article I explained how to download a youtube video with safari, but it does not work form some websites, eg vimeo. There’s a neat little app from here called videobox that you can download that will download flash video from any website and convert it from flv to to mp4 for you. Another option is cosmopod.
Firstly you need to get the URL of the video.
1. Launch Videobox.
1. In Safari, while the video is playing, go to the safari activity window.
2. Look for the line that has a large file that is still downloading this is your video. In the example below it is the line that has 21.3 of 30.8MB. Double click on this line and the video will open all by itself in a new window.
3. Click on the little icon that looks like an earth in the safari address window next to the URL and drag it into Videobox.
That’s it, press the little download button in Videobox and it will download your video for you and convert it to mp4.
UPDATE:
Videobox costs $15
Cosmopod does a similar thing, only $12.50, plus it has a button in Safari to make it easier. In fact, according to this comment from Bryson, Cosmopod might be the better of the two.
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Have you tried http://www.zamzar.com ?
This is a great service for getting YouTube video and have it converted into various formats.
I use cosmopod. It adds a button to the Safari toolbar. When you are playing a movie you can click the button to download the movie, convert to mp4 and add to itunes. http://www.cocoamug.com/cosmopod/
Its not free. But I don’t think Videobox is free either, is it? I think they are about the same price.
But I thought Videobox also had a function that automatically detected when a movie was playing and could start downloading it for you. I think it worked for me a few times but not consistently.
iCab is my normal browser. When I play a YouTube video the iCab filters automatically bring up a link at the top of the page to download the movie file. But it only works in YouTube.
I checked it out because I wanted to capture the world news and show it to students at our college.
Thanks for the info wayne. Following your advice I’ve tried the trial versions of both Videobox & Cosmopod. Videobox had some issues. It took quite a few attempts to accept the URL address of the video plus when it finally did the resulting video was fairly poor quality (both of these issues may of course have been the result of me doing something wrong). Cosmopod on the other hand worked very smoothly and produced a much better quality video. For what its worth my votes with Cosmopod. The button in the Safari toolbar is also VERY convenient.
[...] In this post I wrote about Videobox and how it useful to watch flash files. It is available for free from here as a special Christmas deal. [...]
At step 2, once you identify the downloading video file in the Activity Window if you Option click the FLV will just start downloading without any additional addons. USe it on a daily basis to grab video – from there open the FLV in Quicktime and then save it as a Movie File – too easy and no cost.
Cheers