Blackberry Video: YouTube Video Capture & Conversion for Your Pearl, Curve, or 8800

Capturing and Converting YouTube Video for Blackberry Pearl, Curve, or 8800
Downloading YouTube videos and putting them on your Blackberry keeps getting easier. And why not take advantage of the media player built into the phone?

It only takes a few tools and a little bit of time and you can be playing any videos you want on your Blackberry.

I keep watching videos at lunch, on the bus, waiting for a doctor, or even when I just have a few minutes and nothing else to do. And the great thing is if you get a call the player will pause the video while you are on the phone.

Now, here are the 3 things you will need to do to put YouTube video on the Blackberry.

3 Steps to Putting YouTube Videos on a Blackberry Pearl, Curve, or 8800
1. Download YouTube Videos with FireFox & Video DownloadHelper Plug-in
2. Convert YouTube (FLV) Files to MPEG-4
3. Copy the Video to Your Blackberry

Battery Life
Lasts a long time, much better then my iPod Video player.

Video Storage
Get a media card. Files can ger rather large when it comes to video. For a converted DVD for your blackberry they average 100-600 Megabytes.

This is why you want the microSD storage card. They are cheap and I wouldn't use anything less than a 2GB card. 4GB cards are better and think of all the movies you can get on it. :)


FireFox
Download and start using it!

Video DownloadHelper 2.4.5 by mig

You will need a plugin to download YouTube Videos. I like Video DownloadHelper. It is easy to use and works well.

Here are some more details on what this plugin will do.

The easy way to download Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites. This works also for audio and picture galleries.

DownloadHelper is a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from many sites.

Just surf the Web as you are used to, when DownloadHelper detects it can do something for you, the icon gets animated and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item

For instance, if you go to a YouTube page, you'll be able to download the video directly on your file system. It also works with MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.


Most of the videos you will download from YouTube will be FLV files. These will not play on your Blackberry by default. They will need to be converted.

Option 1 - Videora - IPod Video Converter
Yes, we are going to use an iPod video converter for our Blackberry videos. The Blackberry has similiar characteristics to the iPod.

The most noteable difference in the lack of support for H.264 video on the Blackberry.

So we will create a custom profile for the Blackberry and then the videos will play fine.

Profile Details
Create a new profile with the following settings:
Codec
Video Codec: MPEG-4
Bitrate
Bitrate (kbps): 576
Resolution

Width: 320
Height: 180
Audio
Bitrate (kbps): 128


Also, uncheck the "send videos automatically to iTunes" option. This will keep the videos from showing up on your iPod as well (if you have iTunes installed).

Finally, Videora can be setup to automatically convert videos. Simply define a conversion directory and leave the program running. When files are placed in the directory they will automatically be converted.

Option 2 - Blackberry Video Converter

Watch the Videos
I take the converted files and copy them to a thumb (USB) drive. Then I add these to Roxio Media Manager for the Blackberry. You can also copy the files to the phones media card as well.

Once the files are copied over you can watch them through the media player.

Now start downloading all your favorite videos and converting them for your Blackberry.

Was this helpful? Anyone else have a better tool(s) for doing this? Let me know ...


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey there. thanks so much for the post... quick question... i did everything as you said, and it finally worked! i got video onto my curve! my only question, is sizing. its not using the full screen. do you know a size other than 320x180 that works better so that it's full screen on the curve? (as it is, its a floating square in the middle, not utilizing all of the screen in full screen mode)

thanks!

Jordan

Steve said...

@Jordan --

I'm glad you liked the post. I'm putting together a book on Blackberry video conversions. Leave me a comment if you would like to review it for free when I publish it.

For the screen size issue, you can try using 320x240 resolution when you setup Videora iPod Converter. That is what I currently prefer.

Also, if the source video is widescreen (like DVDs) it will output as letterbox. This will have black bars on the top and bottom.

Good Luck!
S

Anonymous said...

hey.
thanks for the post,it was very helpful.theres only this one problem, for this one video that i want, it
just brings me to a screen which says...video download then it says the video title and the video URL. it doesnt download like all the others, what do i do?

thank you.

Steve said...

@anonymous -- Can you post the URL for the video and I can give it a try?

S

Anonymous said...

Hi!
I have blackberry curve and tried the steps you mentioned, i download the video from youtube to my PC then converted with the help of videora but in my blackberry i can only hear the sound no video. I downloaded videora version 3.8 and the profile you mentioned to setup i didn't see those options. Can you help me in this situation.
Thanks,
Tauqeer

Anonymous said...

There's an even easier way. So easy it is a piece of cake. It's the mediaconverter.org firefox addon found below:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8189

Jdog

Anonymous said...

ive tried to do exactly what u said and the videos wont show. i can hear them but cant see them. i used videora and set the setting exactly as above.

Anonymous said...

I cant thank you enough for the information! Works like a charm! You rock!