I am often asked about streaming, downloading and file
conversion. I always try to encourage
students to download their videos since streaming takes up a lot of bandwidth
and slows down the network. However, it
seems downloading a video is never a simple task. Even if a file is downloaded there is often the
issue of file conversion. This morning a
student came to me wanting to embed a You Tube clip into her PowerPoint. It was a tedious process but this is how we
did it. I downloaded the file with Real
Player Downloader. On my PC in the upper
right hand corner, as a video plays, I am prompted to download the video. On the
MacBook Pros download player does not show up as it does on a PC. To find and launch the player go to
applications -> Real Player downloader and launch the program. Once you play the You Tube clip the movie is
listed in the download player and you select download to start the process. Once
downloaded it saves as a FLV file that needs to be converted to an MP4 to play
on a macbook pro with quicktime. I used a nifty free online file conversion site, Zamar, which worked masterfully. Once downloaded as an MP4 she was able to
embed the video. Zamar is a great free
program but sometimes it is not able to download the file, if this should
happen I usually resort to the website keepvid which is another way to approach
the conversion.
