Editing what you see on YouTube and re-posting

Start by using firefox 2.0 as your web browser which you’ll be glad of for many reasons.

Then install this firefox plug in designed to download the flash videos from youtube. Just a note, iFilm, google video, vemio and youare.tv all use flash as well as a bunch of other sites. So this tutorial will work for those sites too.

Then watch a video on youtube and wait for the red bar at the bottom to load the entire video.

Then click the icon on the bottom right of your firefox browser.

Then choose “save to disk” from the pop up which will take a split second, no loading time.

Then it’s on your desktop and you should name the file by the person who uploaded it so you don’t forget who they are and then a word or two to describe the video and include “.flv” at the end of the tittle.

Then go to this site called zamzar.com.

Then choose one or as many as you’d like “.flv” files on your hard drive.

Then from the “convert to” drop down choose “.mov”.

Then give zamzar your email address. I suggest a gmail address since they have tons of space. We use the name of our film as one word at Gmail.com for ours.

Then check your email and you can download the clip the .mov video.

Then move it from desktop to a more organized place.

Then open the clip up in a video editing app, I use Final Cut Pro.

Then edit as you need to and as you go you’ll need to render the clip which normally is something to avoid but in the case of videos you get online, there is pretty much no way around that.

Then export and upload to youtube. I usually use the iPod codec to export and YouTube seems to take that just fine.

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5 Responses to “Editing what you see on YouTube and re-posting”

  1. Mark M. Bravura Says:
    November 22nd, 2006 at 4:02 pm

    Thanks for the great resources- greatly appreciated! :~D

  2. JPS Says:
    December 4th, 2006 at 6:05 pm

    you can also download isquint (http://www.isquint.org/). this lets you drop the FLV into the application and have it spit it out however you like.

    For mac users if you want to pull an FLV video simply go to the windows, click Activity, then highlight the largest file in the list, and drop that URL in a new browser windwo. this will download the FLV. then drop into ISQUINT application and boom, you have a video you can edit.

    hope this helps.
    JPS

  3. monga Says:
    December 11th, 2006 at 12:08 pm

    Just a silly question about firefox, I love but it always has problems when I’m using myspace, is there something to do so it doesn’t choke in myspace?

    thanks
    m

  4. Chris Hyams Says:
    May 8th, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    Arin,

    Thanks for the great tutorial (and for making a great movie ;) . One quick comment on this:

    > Then edit as you need to and as you go you’ll need to render the
    > clip which normally is something to avoid but in the case of
    > videos you get online, there is pretty much no way around that.

    With FCP, you actually don’t need to render with every edit (which I agree is something to avoid). FCP is forced to render each change only when the source video does not match the settings of the sequence. However, as long as they do match, you can edit any video like I’d imagine you’re used to editing.

    Two choices: a) convert the source video to match the default sequence settings, or b) change the settings on your sequence. Select your sequence in the browser and choose Sequence -> Settings (Command-0). Frame size, aspect ratio, timebase, video + audio settings, etc. can all be set. Either convert your video to match those settings, or change these settings to match your video, and you’re good to go.

    - Chris

  5. Jan Says:
    June 10th, 2007 at 11:10 pm

    thanks for sharing this cool plugin and conversion site!

    Monga: I don’t have any problems using Firefox and MySpace. Must be a problem on your computer..

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