If you can see it, you can save it | Bangkok Post: tech

SLOAN Ranger

A constant and frankly nagging question in the mail received here at the incredibly garish yet somehow calming Database suites high above the mother of rivers is how to save videos.

Operating Live Downloader couldn’t be simpler. The program detects any video input, and flips up a ‘‘download or cancel’’ preview from the system tray.

It vexes many readers and some of us that it now has become easy to watch video on the web, but remains virtually impossible to save it. We can't easily store, forward, convert or otherwise treat video like the other three most common media sub-forms _ text, photos and audio.

Until now.

I have reviewed video downloading software in the past, even shareware programs. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of them, generally focussed on grabbing video from YouTube. None that I have seen are as simple, as intuitive, as helpful and as downright effective as the focus of today's column.

Live Downloader is not the first program to be able to download most video. In my tests, however, it has been, in the words of Tina Turner, simply the best. It never has failed, and never choked.

It works like this: You download and install it. No drama here.

You have to choose whether you want to run Live Downloader in the background all the time, or call it up into memory only when you go movie-hunting. The point is that the program has to be running when you watch or look for video that you want to download.

You find a video and click to play. Live Downloader detects you are watching video. It pops up a very modest, tiny and polite window down near the system tray, where the clock is. This window has a thumbnail version of the video itself, and a green button that says ''Download now,'' meaning the video it has detected.

You can click the ''X'' to dismiss the little window if you don't want to save this video. Otherwise, start the download, provide a file name for Live Download, and press Enter or click OK.

You do not have to watch the video, or even keep the window open. Live Downloader will detect the actual URL of the video, and download it in the background. It does not record the video from your screen (in the manner that some audio recording is done through the speakers) but grabs it directly from the site, in a manner humans can't manage.

That's because... What's that sir?

Oh, well, yes. Live Downloader does indeed work on all streaming video sites _ YouTube and the like, news stations, sites that feature old TV shows and yes, sir, sites that stream, um, ''exotic'' videos of the type you hint at. In fact, a certain male member of my family not only tested this for me, but aroused my curiosity about how he knew where to conduct such tests.

As I was saying, the reason you want Live Downloader is because it can suss out the URLs of any video. I suppose I should say ''almost any'' video, but in more than a month with this program, I haven't been able to break it.

I have even used it with the proxy program Tor to connect to hulu.com in the US, and download TV shows _ two ''forbidden'' acts in one.

There are two drawbacks and one slightly maddening attribute of the program, to my mind, although ''drawbacks'' may be too harsh.

The first is local. Live Downloader is useless against the censors. If Thailand's building full of eagle-eyed Net monitors has decided you cannot watch the YouTube video of the car show because it has coyote dancers, then Live Downloader won't help. (On the other hand, if you find a proxy or VPN that will route you around the censorship, Live Downloader will probably work, at least most of the time.)

The second is built-in. You can only download the video that you are viewing. That means that if you get the ''ordinary'' video view in YouTube, you can't tell Live Downloader to give you the higher-definition version. To do that, you have to first go to that higher-def page and then Live Downloader will grab the higher quality version.

The automatic downloader has no file conversion included. Literally, WYSIWYG _ what you see is what you get. If you want a YouTube flash file (extension .flv) to be converted to a video suitable for burning to DVD (extension .avi or .wmv, say), you have to handle the conversion yourself.

Of course you have to do this separate conversion step to other formats with documents, photos and audio, as well.

Live Downloader truly opens the field of video to individuals, making it just another digital content form.

Finally, the program will offer to download any video your browser discovers. That means, depending on the strength of your ad blocker, that Live Downloader may see Flash adverts and offer to get them, meaning you have to click ''No''.

Generous program author Peter Williams has details of the program, including a short video illustrating how it works, as well as download links on his website, www.live-downloader.com (the hyphen is correct).

Relate Search: Live Downloader