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DESCRIPTION
TubeTV... Flash video download and conversion for Apple TV, iPhone, and iPod.
Got an Apple TV, video iPod, or iPhone and want more content for it? Wish you could watch YouTube on your TV or iPod? Like to keep copies of your favorite internet videos on your Mac?
What can it do? TubeTV is a freeware program for Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard, and above which enables you to search for, save, and convert YouTube and many other flash videos to a format suitable for playback on your favorite devices.
A built in search bar and web browser helps you conveniently locate your favorite videos from common sites such as YouTube. If you prefer, a single button or menu option will grab the currently displayed URL or movie from your default web browser (Safari, Camino, Firefox, or OmniWeb). High quality video conversions using the H.264 codec are performed with QuickTime® and Perian. If desired, TubeTV can add exported movies directly to iTunes and set appropriate comment tags enabling you to create a smart playlist. Alternately, double clicking on a converted video file will open it in iTunes or drag and drop a saved video file on to QuickTime Player to view it locally.
Isn't this already part of Apple TV, iPhone, and iPod Touch?
Yes, it's true that Apple has added YouTube support to the Apple TV (June 20th, 2007) and iPhone, but TubeTV can still be helpful for saving your favorite videos and adding them permanently to your library. The YouTube options on the Apple TV, iPhone, and iPod Touch don't have access to the entire YouTube library, and it's also possible you'd want to add content from other web sites besides YouTube - TubeTV works with most flash video on many different web sites. It's also still a great solution for viewing content on your video iPod, phone, or locally on your Mac.
What else is it good for? Older computers tend to be too slow to play YouTube videos at full speed - they stutter and skip frames. Use TubeTV to download the movie and then play back the flv file with QuickTime player at full speed rather than suffering through the stutter - this works even on an eight year old Mac like a G4 400 MHz tower (from 1999!).
Localizations
TubeTV has been localized into Spanish, German, and French. Thanks to our localizers for their time and effort on this - more details on the TubeTV web page.
Features
- Built in browser with search bar for YouTube and Google Video movies.
- Support for many other sites which use flash video.
- Support for bookmarking movies (requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or higher).
- Optional history of recently viewed movies (requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or higher).
- Ability to download using the flash video cache if the entire movie has been loaded.
- "Download without watching" technology enables you to save a movie without first watching it.
- Auto export video as flv (flash video), or for Apple TV, Video iPod, the 3rd generation iPod nano, the iPod Touch, iPhone, or other generic cell phone. See full compatibility list below.
- Batch download.
- Batch convert existing movies from your Mac.
- Ability to add exported movies to iTunes with appropriate tags for smart playlist creation.
- Uses the high quality H.264 video codec for export (with exception of the generic cell phone setting).
- Option to grab URL or movie from your default browser (Safari, Firefox, Camino, or OmniWeb).
- Universal binary - Intel, PPC native; written with Cocoa.
WHAT'S NEW
Version 1.0
- [new feature] Fully cached flash movies can now be saved immediately rather than re-downloading (requires Leopard or higher).
- [new feature] Support for bookmarking movies (favorites) added (requires Leopard or higher).
- [new feature] Optional history of recently viewed movies (requires Leopard or higher).
- [new feature] New and improved version checking system which can actually download new releases rather than just sending the user to a web site.
- [new feature] Redesigned progress window which behaves more like users expect with regard to resizing and positioning. Progress items have a new option to reveal associated files in the Finder.
- [new feature] Enhanced preferences with more user customizability.
- [new feature] Various UI enhancements.
- [new feature] New option to automatically add converted movies to the TubeTV playlist in iTunes (playlist is created if not present). Movies are tagged to enable users to easily create smart playlists.
- [new feature] New option to attempt a movie download from your default web browser without first displaying the movie in TubeTV.
- [new feature] Support for downloading movies from dailymotion.com.
- [bugfix] Fixed a problem on certain web sites where the save button wouldn't remain enabled even though it should have.
- [bugfix] Fixed a crasher which could occur in rare cases when attempting to load a preview thumbnail using Perian.
- [other] Retooled help system with much more information about all aspects of TubeTV.
- [other] This version is localized in German by Björn Uhde and Wolf-Jakob Gratz, French by Antoine Desir, and Spanish by Francisco López.
- [other] Numerous other small changes and improvements.
Version 0.9.2:
- [new feature] Improved support for iPhone and added new export option for iPhone (Cellular) which is optimized for streaming movies to an iPhone over the EDGE data network.
Version 0.9.1:
- [bugfix]Fixed a problem which prevented conversions of movies which contained accented characters (ñ, ç, é, í, etc.) and unicode symbols.
Version 0.9:
- This version is English only.
- [bugfix] This version of TubeTV is now compatible with Perian version 1.0; the previous version only worked with Perian 0.5 due to some changes in the way Perian loads flash videos.
- [new feature] Simultaneous downloads now supported.
- [new feature] Simultaneous background conversions now supported. Conversions are now handled by a separate background process to improve responsiveness and allow continued browsing while converting.
- [new feature] New download/conversion window shows multiple downloads or conversions with preview images and cancel buttons.
;li>[new feature] Option to automatically delete downloads after converting.
- [new feature] Ability to right-click on a link to a web page containing a movie and save it directly without first loading the page.
- [new feature] Many other subtle changes including auto-detection of ~/Downloads folder on first launch if present and page load status indicator.
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.4 or later
Mac OS X 10.5 for full functionality
QuickTime 7.4 or later
Perian 1.0 or later
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| TubeTV User Reviews (25 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Jul 1 2009 |
CHAOTICPIXEL Worked as advertised. UI isn't anything special, then again, it doesn't need to be. Downloads quick and converts to a couple of different formats in a couple of minutes. | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Jun 21 2009 |
DRDUL I tried just about every YouTube downloader, and TubeTV was the one that I stayed with. I wanted one that was easy enough for my wife to use, yet offered enough options for downloading and converting. I like that the TubeTV window emulates a browser (rather than the iTunes-type windows of some other apps) and that URLs can be easily grabbed from Safari. I also liked that it worked, which surprisingly wasn't the case with a few other apps I tried (for various reasons, they choked on the high-quality FLV video I was testing them with, whereas TubeTV downloaded and converted the video without a problem).
(Version 1.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Jul 16 2008 |
VICWITT It worked great for me. It was surprised how easy it was to get youtube movies into quick time movies.
(Version 1.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Jun 26 2008 |
ASH435 TubeTV is great - I've had it for a while. I recently installed the Safari 4 beta and I don't seem to get any sound with my movies. Is there a connection here? (Obviously if there is, it's my problem, but I thought someone would like to know).
(Version 1.0) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Jun 26 2008 |
ASH435 Very sorry! Old version of Perian installed. Works even better than ever now - I like 'Download from Safari'.
(Version 1.0) | |
| Apr 19 2008 |
XENOPHILE Fast and responsive developer. This is the first time I've griped about an app on MacUpdate, only to see my gripes fixed on the next version! I'd still like a widget in Safari's toolbar which will save flash movies to disk. Perhaps it could open a window or pane with a list of flash movies the user can select for downloading. Since Safari's Activity Viewer already gives this info, it seems like it would be easy to add such a widget. I know it's possible to double-click the flash movie address in the Activity Viewer to open it in a new window, and then copy the address from the address bar in the new window, and paste it into a downloading app, but it's a tedious solution. My only other request for TubeTV would be for a more fully-featured download manager, but that's really outside the realm of freeware - although I wouldn't hesitate to pay for TubeTV if updates continue to rock as hard as the last one.
(Version 1.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Feb 14 2008 |
THE_JUDGE_G4 With this useful app I am now able to convert other .flv files downloaded from other sites than YouTube. TubeTV can convert the files into a playable and seek-able format that iTunes and QuickTime can handle.
(Version 1.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Feb 10 2008 |
MOTORCITYMAC Stop whining dopes! Go *pay* for some other app that does the same, then you'll have reason to complain... This app is FREE - it WORKS - and the developer even went the extra mile for auto-conversion to whatever final filetype you want. So maybe you wait for a few extra steps, big deal. You got a better way to code it? For free? Then please- do it! Thanks for this clean and clever app! The developer truly bleeds six colors! Great effort, and I'm sure it will only get better. (I'll bet this v1.0 already has)
(Version 1.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Nov 9 2007 |
XENOPHILE It's great to be able to save flash video to my Mac, and it's a nice touch that TubeTV can automatically convert the video to mpeg4 after downloading. Unfortunately, I found a few problems with TubeTV. First, the web browser is redundant. Why include it when I can use a real browser without any browsing limitations? And the search field for YouTube is also unnecessary, since I can just go to the YouTube website using my browser and search for videos (and open multiple videos in multiple browser tabs). A far better solution would be either a Safari add-on or standalone app that simply grabs flash videos from Safari and saves them on the local HD. The real flaw with TubeTV is that it cannot "grab" flash video from the browser cache, not from Safari and not even from it's own browser! If I load a flash video in TubeTV's browser, view it, and decide I want to save it, TubeTV must download the entire video again. This is a waste of time and bandwidth, especially for dial-up users. All in all, a nice little app. If it were shareware, I'd consider it's shortcomings a deal-breaker, but as freeware it's a welcome addition to my hard drive. Thanks!
(Version 0.9.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Oct 2 2007 |
HUSTY Wish I could enjoy this fantastic sounding app. I plug in the address for the video I want to save but TubeTV consistently crashes in no more than two seconds after I click the save button, on a brand new Macbook Pro. Used these types of apps before but no such issues - odd. Would love a solution!
(Version 0.9.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 10 2007 |
LAINSNAVI Great app. I think there should be an option to prevent the Progress window from becoming frontmost whenever a new download or conversion starts. It can get pretty aggravating if you're downloading or converting a bunch of videos.
(Version 0.9.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
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