Program to turn video to MP3?

[Jimmy9190]

I saw online there are programs and software that you can use to take the audio portion of a Youtube video and turn it into an MP3. There are a lot of people who have posted songs as videos on Youtube and there are also thousands of plain regular music videos on Youtube too.

My main question is is this a legitimate process? It's not the same as file sharing but is it equal to illegal downloading?

If it is legit and OK to do this, what is the sound quality like? Is it the same as a song bought from Amazon or Itunes?

I would appreciate any info from anyone here who has any experience or info on this. Thanks.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
My main question is is this a legitimate process? It's not the same as file sharing but is it equal to illegal downloading?

Will RIAA go after you if you've captured audio from a youtube video? I'd say no. Is it ethical? I suppose it depends on your own definition of ethics. Is it ethical to borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy for yourself? I would consider copying audio from youtube to be similar.

Quote:

If it is legit and OK to do this, what is the sound quality like? Is it the same as a song bought from Amazon or Itunes?

The sound quality depends on the quality of the file that was uploaded to youtube. Some of these youtube videos are of very poor quality, others are pretty good, but by no means CD-quality, although many people can't tell a CD apart from a 128 kbps MP3 file these days, thanks in part to things like omnipresent dynamic range compression, but also thanks to the fact that modern day audio encoders are much better than what they used to be 15 years ago.

 

[Mixologist]

Firefox add-on 'Download Helper' works awesome.

 

[The_Jeff]

Ripping youtube goes against the youtube TOS surely. Also uploading custom music videos that are nothing more than an album cover and a cd rip is a violation for the uploader.

If you can manage to download the entire video file, ffmpeg will split the audio for you.

If you can't figure anything else out, the "analog hole" always works. Get a double ended male 1/8" wire and plug one computer out into the other's in. You can get youtube on set top blu-ray players, smartphones, ipod touches, etc if you only have one 'puter.

 

[01rangerxl]

The legality of it probably depends on what you are trying to rip. Something that isn't commercially available is probably fine, but with commercially available music, it's probably a legal no no.

If it's something available commercially, I'd just pay the $0.99 for the much better sound quality.

VLC Media Player is a good multipurpose player of many formats and can convert to MP3. It's available on Sourceforge for free and doesn't come with any junk like everything on Cnet Download now does.

There's also a flash downloader for Firefox that will save some things off Youtube as an MP4, which can be added to a music CD. I can't remember the name, but it's available on the FF addons page.

 

[bigmike]

I use Freemake video converter:

http://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/

I'm also a big fan of download helper for FF, like Mixologist mentioned.