Ultimate Guide to Playing and Transcoding Downloaded Videos

Posted 12/16/2009 at 9:30am | by Paul Lilly

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Create MP3s from Videos

Videos aren't just about the visuals, and every once in awhile you'll run into a clip with awesome audio. Wouldn't it be great if you could rip the audio from the video clip and save it as an MP3? Sure it would, and we're going to show you how.

When it comes to YouTube videos, the easiest way to do this is to let others do the heavy lifting for you. There are several services out there that will pull the audio from any YouTube clip, leaving you a single click away from downloading the resulting MP3 file. And best of all, it's free. One of our favorites is www.video2mp3.net. In addition to YouTube, Video2MP3 also supports MyVideo, Clipfish, Sevenload, Dailymotion, and even MySpace. There's also an option to pull audio from a YouTube HQ stream.

To extract the audio stream from a video on your hard drive and convert it to an MP3, you're going to need the help of a third-party program, and for that, we like the one-two combo of Audacity with the LAME MP3 encoder. First, download and install Audacity from here. Be advised that we've had better luck with the latest beta release (1.3.10) on Windows 7 in 64-bit flavor.

Once installed, open up Audacity and navigate to File>Preferences. Click the Download button next to 'LAME MP3 Library' and download/install the LAME MP3 encoder. When it's finished, click on the Locate button next to 'MP3 Library'.' Assuming you didn't change the directory when installing the LAME encoder, Audacity should find the location on its own. If not, click the browse button and locate it yourself.

Next, mash the Download button next to 'FFmpeg Library' and download/install the FFmpeg installer. Click the Locate button next to 'FFmpeg Library.' A pop-up window will probably appear saying "Audacity has automatically detected valid FFmpeg libraries. Do you still want to locate them manually?" If it does, click No. If it doesn't, browse to where you installed FFmpeg for Audacity.

Audacity is not prepped and primed to do its thing. Click on File>Open and locate the video for which you want to extract the audio stream. Audacity will open just the audio portion, at which point you can edit the audio if you wish (like deleting the intro narrative, or splicing a song from the middle of the video).

When you're left with just the audio you want, click on File>Export. In the Save as type pull-down menu, select MP3 Files. By default, Audacity will rip the audio using a 128 kbps bitrate. If you want a higher (or lower) quality rip, click the Options button and select the desired bitrate in the Quality pull-down menu. When you're finished, click OK>Save. Fill in any applicable Metadata in the pop-up window that appears, then click OK and sit back while Audacity rips your audio!

Convert Videos to Play on a Wii

Just because the novelty of the motion sensor Wii remote has worn off doesn't mean you need to toss the Wii console into the recycle bin. Overhyped control scheme or not, there are still some must-play titles being churned out, and in addition to gaming, you can play videos through your Wii as well.

One of the easiest ways to do this is with Wii Video 9, a free video conversion utility designed specifically for converting movies to the Wii. The program's home page smacks you in the face with a couple of ads, but if you can look past this annoyance, it's a pretty handy program for Wii owners to keep in their arsenal. Download Wii Video 9 from here.

Before getting started, we also need to download and install AviSynth, which is a scripting language that essentially acts as a non-linear video editor controlled through scripting. You can download AviSynth from here.

Open up Wii Video 9 and then click the Settings button on the top of the screen and then navigate to the Encoding tab. You'll notice several different options in the Profile pull-down menu. For the highest quality video, select MJPEG 2048kbps Stero/192kbps AviSynth

Next, navigate over to the Converter tab. Choose an Output Directory, or if you want to save the movie directly to your SD/SDHC card, select it from the Device Directory field.

Now it's time to choose your video file. Mash the Convert button and navigate to the Video File tab. Click on Convert New File in the lower right corner. This will prompt you to choose between Normal Mode and Power Mode in the main window, along with force feeding more ads. Click on Power Mode.

The next window is pretty self explanatory. Mash the Select File button to locate and load the video you want to convert. If the rest of the settings change back to their defaults, go ahead and change them on this screen. Make sure MJPEG 2048kbps Stereo/192kbps AviSynth is selected in the Profile pull-down menu. Also take note of the Output Directory and change the location if desired. Finally, punch the Start Converting button in the lower right corner.

Conversion times will vary depending on the size of the video and the hardware you're running under the hood, but in most cases, you'll be looking at a matter of minutes, not hours. In the meantime, you can queue up other videos, or twiddle your thumbs.

Image Credit: joystiq.com

Now here's where things get a little tricky. To view the video on your Wii, you'll need to transfer it to your SD or SDHC card. Pop the card in your Wii and navigate to the Photo Channel. We ran into an error message that said our SD card was unusable, which was odd, considering it contained perfectly usable blocks of saved game data. The problem, it turns out, is that our Photo Channel was outdated. To remedy this, we backtracked to the Wii's main menu and hit up the Wii Shop Channel. Under Wii Channels, we found an available update to Photo Channel 1.1. After downloading/installing the update, our SDHC card was suddenly recognized and we were able to play our converted video.

My Videos Still Won't Play!

When it comes to playing videos, the Wii is arguably the most stubborn out of the big three consoles (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360). In some instances, we had to go back and try different settings when converting our videos, and in some cases, they would refuse to play no matter what we did.