Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Tiresias · Nov 22, 2011, 12:25 PM

I did some Googling but it seems that unless you have QuickTime Pro (and I do not) it's a bit of a rigmarole. Nevertheless, I downloaded a program called xmpeg and dutifully followed all the instructions but the resulting file had 0 kb.

Surely there's an easier way?

-Q- · Nov 22, 2011, 06:02 PM

Tedious to do one-by-one, but it works: ListenToYouTube.com

Don't steal music.™

Spheric Harlot · Nov 22, 2011, 06:33 PM

In Lion, context-click on the downloaded video in the Finder and select "Encode video".

Select "audio only" and save to desired format.

That's totally awesome, and no, I didn't know it was there until I read this just two minutes ago:
Lion: Encode media from Automator or the command line | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

-Q- · Nov 22, 2011, 06:44 PM

Ok, that's pretty awesome. I didn't know anything about that.

Tiresias · Nov 23, 2011, 11:52 AM

I'm runnig OSX 10.5.8

Tiresias · Nov 28, 2011, 12:31 PM

Bump.

cybergoober · Nov 28, 2011, 08:40 PM

Saw this today. Download YouTube to MP3 for Mac - Extract MP3 audio from YouTube videos. MacUpdate.com
Worth a shot.

cgc · Nov 28, 2011, 09:00 PM

I use KeepVid.

Not to thread-jack but does anyone know how to convert a video to html5 video format (aka webm)?

besson3c · Nov 28, 2011, 09:15 PM

I do this kind of thing frequently actually using the Firefox extension "DownloadHelper". Works fine.

besson3c · Nov 28, 2011, 09:15 PM

Originally Posted by cgc

I use KeepVid.

Not to thread-jack but does anyone know how to convert a video to html5 video format (aka webm)?

From what originating format?

Athens · Nov 28, 2011, 09:47 PM

Vuze has a nice converter in it. Not sure if it does Flash because I have not tried but been converting my divx and mkv movies to mp4 for my AppleTV with it.

cgc · Nov 29, 2011, 07:58 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

From what originating format?

Mostly .avi (from P&S camera). I've been a Handbrake user for a long time and don't see any combination of options to convert a video to the WebM format.

WebM is an open media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container.

-Q- · Nov 29, 2011, 08:54 AM

I don't always convert video to WebM format, but when I do, I use Miro Video Converter.

Seriously, it's been a pretty good tool for conversion (handbrake seems a bit faster when I need something in a hurry) and it's handled just about everything I've thrown at it.

Athens · Nov 29, 2011, 01:31 PM

Why bother with WebM? It has little to no hardware support, the quality is inferior, it suffers serious doubts about its status on patents. I don't see the gain by converting AVI to it, and most of the web isn't backing it. Little native browser support which defeats the purpose of HTML 5 when it comes to not having to use plugin's.

I only convert my stuff from AVI to H.264 for compatibility between my devices otherwise I wouldn't even bother. Every time you transcode/convert something from one format to another you lose some of it. I would stick to H.264 for HTML 5

cgc · Nov 29, 2011, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by Athens

Why bother with WebM? It has little to no hardware support, the quality is inferior, it suffers serious doubts about its status on patents. I don't see the gain by converting AVI to it, and most of the web isn't backing it. Little native browser support which defeats the purpose of HTML 5 when it comes to not having to use plugin's.

I only convert my stuff from AVI to H.264 for compatibility between my devices otherwise I wouldn't even bother. Every time you transcode/convert something from one format to another you lose some of it. I would stick to H.264 for HTML 5

Firefox, Opera, Chrome, IE9, and Safari (and some derivative browsers) support WebM. I need to convert from avi because I am going to integrate some videos into my webpage and I don't want to use flv and my WebM player is sweet. BTW, YouTube's experimenting with WebM as well and that may drive the adoption a bit.

Athens · Dec 2, 2011, 05:35 AM

Originally Posted by cgc

Firefox, Opera, Chrome, IE9, and Safari (and some derivative browsers) support WebM. I need to convert from avi because I am going to integrate some videos into my webpage and I don't want to use flv and my WebM player is sweet. BTW, YouTube's experimenting with WebM as well and that may drive the adoption a bit.

Um, no.

Mozilla Firefox 4, Opera 10.6, and Google Chrome have native support for WebM. And currently the only chip to offer native full support to WebM is RK29xx from Rockchip. AMD, ARM and Broadcom Qualcomm and Texas Instruments have announced future native support its not clear when any of them will release full native hardware support.

Youtube owned by Google is experimenting with WebM because Google owns WebM and it was Google that ruined the HTML 5 Video support standard. The standard was going to be based around H.264 and until this year included Chrome and Google. Its still debatable why but many suspect it was a collaboration with Adobe to save flash. Because under the HTML 5 standard browsers would not need plug-ins for native video play back. And the only company that would have been hurt by this was Adobe and its Flash. It was going to be fantastic because the Web wouldn't need flash any more. Like the HD format war between Blu-Ray and HD DVD its now created a mess.

H.264 has the support of both Microsoft and Apple and Microsoft was even going to pay for the license for Mozilla so Firefox could use it at no cost to close the standard and get things going. Chrome has native support for it already and Youtube and much of the video content on the web is already H.264. Also almost every device has native H.264 support and is a universal format that xbox, PS3, zune, iOS all support.

Besides all that, WebM is violating a ton of patents and it wont be long before patent lawsuits begin over it. Its why Apple, Microsoft and Google have been buying up patents all over the place for the confrontation that will occur over it. The larger the patent pools each belong to the more leverage they have. So expect the legal battles to show its ugly face in 2012.

I personally will never use the codec and will actively avoid content that uses it. If you want the most compatibility with web browsers, and mobile devices and other hardware H.264 is the best route to go.

cgc · Dec 2, 2011, 04:00 PM

Originally Posted by Athens

Um, no...

Funny you disagreed but then went on to agree my statements were correct. Part of the problem with H.264 is the licensing which is why they wanted to move away from it to the inferior quality/bandwidth efficiency of WebM. I didn't realize there was a dispute about WebM that might change it...I'm going to rescind my previous post and instead go with an H.264 player...I rip everything to H.264 anyways but I played with WebM and it will play in a browser without a plugin which is slick.

Thanks for the extra info.

Waragainstsleep · Dec 2, 2011, 06:10 PM

Miro is definitely handy for converting flash, especially to mp3.

Bentley56 · 10:49 PM

Hi, without using QuickTime Pro, you still can convert YouTube video as MP3 files. As far as I know, there are some ways for us to take audio from YouTube video as MP3 files. They are approriate for different operating systems, so you perhaps need to read the tutorial carefully at first.

ghporter · Dec 28, 2011, 10:31 PM

Good question! I don't have the answer for you, but I'll bet someone will chime in soon and tell all of us about how to get MP3 audio out of a YouTube video.

Welcome to our forums!