Using Video with Transcribe!

Transcribe! for Windows and Mac can display the video of some QuickTime movie files, synchronised with Transcribe!'s variable-speed audio playback. Basic help for this is in the main Transcribe! Help, but here are some additional notes about coping with different types of video.

You will find a link to view a video of this feature in action, near the bottom of this page

Video Formats

There are countless different video formats out there (wmv, mov, mp4, avi, flv, etc. etc). Transcribe! uses QuickTime for playing video, which means that mov & mp4 files should work straight away. For other formats there are two options. The preferred option is to install a plugin for QuickTime to enable it to play the format in question, if there is one available. The second choice is to use other software to convert the video to a format which QuickTime can handle.

Installing QuickTime Plugins

Various third parties produce plugins for QuickTime which enable it to play other formats. Launch QuickTime Player (on Windows you'll find it on the Start menu) and in QuickTime Player select Preferences -> QuickTime Preferences. Select the "Update" tab, press "Install..." to "Find and install new third party QuickTime software". This will take you to a page listing plugins, for instance the DIVX plugin listed here is free and will allow you to play avi files.

There are other plugins to be found as well, for instance if you are on Mac OS-X 10.4.7 or higher then you can install Perian - "a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats". This will enable QuickTime to play many video formats including Flash video (flv files - YouTube etc.), which means you will be able to play them in Transcribe! without needing to convert them to a different format. If you want to play YouTube videos in Transcribe! then you still need to download them first - see below.

Special Note About YouTube Format

By default YouTube has always used Flash video (flv) but these days it is possible to download other formats directly from YouTube, by adding an extra option to the address you use for viewing the video. For the full details see this page.

The main point for us is that by adding &fmt=18 to the address, you can view & download mp4 instead of flv. E.g. use the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbN-jO11vKg&fmt=18 instead of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbN-jO11vKg. This mean you can use the resulting file directly with QuickTime and therefore with Transcribe!, and it can also mean superior quality because of avoiding format conversion. Brilliant!

(Warning : apparently this doesn't always work : sometimes you get Flash video even though you used "&fmt=18". So try it and see...)

See below about how to download the YouTube video file, after you have watched it in this way.

Downloading Video, and Converting Video Formats

For format conversion I have had reasonable results using Movavi Video Converter on Windows (except it won't read flv files) and VisualHub on Mac, but there are many many more : search the web for "video format conversion" or "convert wmv to mov" or "convert DVD to mov" or "convert flv to mov" and you will find lots to choose from.

Here are some free video format converter programs. I haven't tried them but they have been recommended to me.
"Free Video to iPod and PSP Converter" for Windows
"Super" for Windows

For downloading YouTube on Windows or Mac you could try vixy.net or KeepVid or Zamzar or TubeSock ... and many more options if you look around.

For downloading YouTube on Windows you could try UltraGet Video Downloader or ImTOO YouTube Video Converter or Any Video Converter or Orbit Downloader ... and many more options if you look around.

Also try OnlineVideoConvertor. You can choose either mp4 or mov as output.

For downloading YouTube on Mac you could try Videobox or CosmoPod or TubeTV ... and many more options if you look around.

If you are using Firefox then you could try a Firefox add-on called Video DownloadHelper. You download it by going to Firefox's Tools menu, "Add-ons" or "Extensions", and click "Get Extensions" or "Get More Extensions". Or another Firefox add-on called 1-Click YouTube Video Download.

Another Firefox add-on is Fast YouTube Download. Apparently this one can download YouTube videos as mp4, ready for use with Transcribe!

For copying from DVD on Mac you could try MacTheRipper ... and many more options if you look around.

Video Sources

1) Disk file : If you already have the video as a file on your computer then all you need to do is make sure QuickTime can play it - see above.

2) DVD, unprotected : if you look then you will find many programs capable of reading an unprotected DVD to a QuickTime movie file on your hard disk. Be aware that this can be a slow process, and the resulting file will be large. If the software allows you to select which scene to copy then so much the better. There is another issue here : many DVD copy programs assume you are copying a feature film. They look for the longest single track and copy that. But music and teaching videos are often divided into multiple video tracks, so the copy software finds the biggest single track and copies it, ignoring all the others. So you may need more sophisticated copying software for dealing with this.

3) DVD, protected : almost all commercially produced DVDs are copy protected. I believe it is possible to obtain software which can copy protected DVDs to hard disk or to another DVD, while removing the protection. This may very well be illegal.

4) Online Video : there are huge numbers of music videos for online viewing on YouTube and other similar sites. These mostly use Flash Video (flv files). There are two issues here: you need to download the thing, and you need to convert it to QuickTime movie, or install a suitable QuickTime plugin. Search for "download youtube video" or "download flash video" and you will find any number of sites dedicated to downloading Flash Video (flv) files from YouTube, and from the many other sites which use flv for video. Sites like YouTube don't want you to download their video files so they tweak their systems from time to time to prevent these techniques working. Consequently some of the websites and techniques will work, others won't. I have no idea whether this is legal or not, especially considering that many online videos may have been posted without the copyright owner's permission anyway.

Some websites offer "one stop" solutions, allowing you to download from YouTube and save as QuickTime movie. Others merely help to download the flv (Flash Video) file, after which you would need to convert to QuickTime movie using one of the many converter programs as mentioned above. In fact it is possible to download video from YouTube and similar sites without special tools, read on...

Downloading FLV (Flash Video) from YouTube and similar sites, without special tools.

First, watch it right through in the usual way. This results in the flv video file being temporarily downloaded to your computer. Then you will need to find the cached video file. The location varies between systems but in all cases you can identify it by its large size (typically several MB), by its creation time which will correspond to the time you viewed the video, and also its name or description might include words like "video", "flash", or "flv".

Here are the places to look (depending on operating system and what browser you used to view the video):

Safari on Mac: On the Window menu select "Activity". You should see the video file in the list. Double-click it and it will download to your desktop. Then ctrl-click it, "Get Info", and change its name to end with ".flv" because it is in fact Flash Video.

Firefox on Ubuntu Linux: Look in /tmp and you should find it. Copy to some other location and rename so the name ends with ".flv". Transcribe! for Linux doesn't display video but there's no reason why you can't use a Linux machine if you have one, for downloading videos.

On some versions of Firefox you may find the video listed if you go to the Tools menu, "Page Info", then "Media".

Internet Explorer or Firefox on Windows XP: The files and folders involved are "hidden" so in order to see them you must use Windows Explorer, go to your hard drive ("C:\" probably), select Folder Options on the Tools menu, and on the View tab you must check "Show hidden files and folders" and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files".

After viewing the video in Internet Explorer: navigate to the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files". Click on either the "Size" column header to find the largest files there, or the "Last Accessed" to find the most recenty accessed, and you will find the video file listed as something like "get_video?video_id=vEdeBtd...........".

After viewing the video in Firefox: navigate to the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\eyi885a5.default\Cache" and sort by "Date Modified", look for a large recently modified file with a name like "562F42DDd01".

Once you have found the file, control-click it and drag/copy it to a more convenient folder. Rename it as MyVideoName.flv

If you have any problem with this method, click here for a different Windows XP approach.

Internet Explorer or Firefox on Windows Vista: Apparently on Vista you'll find the video file stored at C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp as *.tmp file (not .flv). But by making them .tmp files they prevent backups etc being made easily.

If you have complete instructions for a way of doing it in Vista, do let me know.

Recommend this page to others, on these social bookmarking sites:

"Like" the Seventh String Software site on Facebook

StumbleUpon	Delicious	Facebook	Digg
Diigo	Simpy	Yahoo! MyWeb	Spurl

Seventh String Home