YouTube With Palm Web Video Generator Software
Until now whenever I’ve wanted to watch video from YouTube while on the go I’ve relied on the latest version of Kinoma Player for my Treo because it’s the only solution available that plays streaming Flash Video or streaming 3gp video (when using YouTube Mobile).
Although Kinoma works well in general I personally find that streaming video on a smartphone has too many limitations because of 1) the need to always be within coverage of a wireless data network and 2) too many steps and delays to actually find a YouTube video of interest.
Let’s face it, the entire process of “media discovery” (including video, music and photos) on a smartphone is still either not possible or extremely tedious and cumbersome. The best and often only alternative therefore remains to use your PC for the discovery part of the process (search/download) and your Treo for the consumption part (transfer/view/listen).
With this in mind I found an application called Palm Web Video Generator which now allows me to easily save any YouTube video directly to my PC, copy it to my SD card and view it as often as I like, anywhere I like and whenever I like using CorePlayer (the #1 Treo video player) – particularly helpful if you have favourite videos that you’d like to show to friends repeatedly or very long clips where viewing offline is more practical than streaming.
The Palm Web Video Generator (screenshot above) is extremely simple to install (only requires Microsoft .NET 2.0 to be installed on your Windows PC) and equally easy to use. After launching the application you just need to:
- Choose your device from the pull-down menu (Selecting Palm Lifedrive will save your file at 480x320 resolution; Treo 600 at 160x160 and Treo 650, 680, 700 at 320x320)
- Paste a YouTube URL (NOTE: the URL must include “www” or you’ll get an error message)
- Press START
- Save the file to your local drive when the download and conversion is complete.
All video successfully downloaded by Palm Web Video Generator is recoded and saved as an AVI file and both the image and audio quality of the output are excellent (albeit there can sometimes be a 0.25sec audio lag). You’ll need to allow about 1 minute of download/conversion for every minute of YouTube video that you would like to save.
Although the end results are extremely good (see below), for the most part Palm Web Video Generator is still a fairly basic application. Among others, you don’t have a “Preferences” menu to choose your device instead of having to re-select it every time, you cannot queue multiple YouTube videos (although you can open multiple instances of the application), you don’t have the option to name and save your file at the beginning of the recoding instead of the end and you can also not select a default “Save To” folder.
Having said this, there is a lot of potential for this software and it would be brilliant if I could combine subscription to certain YouTube videos so that they could be automatically recoded, saved to my PC and ready to view on my Treo. Separately, it is also worthwhile noting that for some reason (I have yet to figure out exactly why) there are certain YouTube streams that simply cannot be converted and will give you an error message at the end of the download.
The bottom line is that while it’s not perfect and still needs quite a bit of refinement and added functionality, Palm Web Video Generator delivers a great solution today for those Treonauts wishing to download YouTube videos and watch them wherever and whenever they want. The only alternative remains Kinoma Player (preferably with a high speed wireless data connection and an unlimited data plan) and naturally CorePlayer continues to be an essential application for all video viewing on your Treo.
You can use our 20% off coupon valid until August 31 by simply entering the coupon code BESTSELLERS in your cart [please note that this coupon is not valid for use in the Treo Accessories Store].
Treonauts always generate the best solutions…
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Comments
some streams can't be converted because they are using the new h264 standard youtube is slowly transfering over all video's to h264. this program takes .flv (Flash) and converts them
I used to download from youTube and convert, but I like the goiv.com site better to watch youtube on my Treo. The quality is a lot better and videos are already available that other people wanted. i have an unlimited data plan so i just browse it on my Treo, but i think you can download and copy to your Treo if you want.
S4BB. Hmm. Don't they take open source software and then re-package them and sell them as their own? I recall they did that with MetaViewsoft's PalmPDF some time back. Actually, if you look at the stuff they sell, I can see a lot of stuff that's already available for free. Check the ebooks out at MemoWare if you want the ebooks for free. Do a search for "s4bb palmpdf" (without quotes) and you'll see what I mean.
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