Downloading videos from YouTube to play in your phone

Serendipity brought me to the YouTube page of the video of Bob Dylan’s first concert performance with an electric guitar. The high-quality BBC video clip shows the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 booing Dylan before he launched into an electric guitar version of Like A Rolling Stone.

In the YouTube page were links to a playlist of Dylan’s Newport performances, including his earlier acoustic work when he was the aural embodiment of the voice in the wilderness.

I have most of Bob Dylan’s albums but none of these high-quality BBC clips on YouTube of his performances. After hours of repeated listening, I wanted to download the video clips into my phone to listen whenever I wanted to.

Bob Dylan playing in my Sony Ericsson P1i.
BEST LOVE SONG, EVER. Bob Dylan plays Love Minus Zero/No Limit in this video clip that I’ve downloaded and converted to play in my Sony Ericsson P1i.

Three years ago, I blogged about how to download videos from sites like YouTube and convert these to play in your phone. It’s still among my most visited posts, and the instructions still work but there’s a simpler way.

To download any video from YouTube, just enter the letters pwn in the YouTube website address. So your www.youtube.com/video_link becomes www.pwnyoutube.com/video_link.

It’s that simple. When you hit enter, you will be given the option of downloading the video clip as an .flv file or a high-quality .mp4 file.

Download YouTube video
DOWNLOAD ANY YOUTUBE VIDEO. To download any YouTube video, just add pwn to the web address.

Some phones might be able to play the .mp4 file that is downloaded without having to convert it. I tried it on the Sony Ericsson P1i and I could hear the sound but the image froze a few frames after it started playing.

Now I could play the video using the DivX player for the P1i but I didn’t want to install another piece of software so I decided to just convert the .mp4 files to something that can be played by my P1i’s default movie player.

For the conversion, I used Any Video Converter, a free and dependable video converter that I have been using for quite a while, which you can download here.

Any Video Converter
ANY VIDEO CONVERTER is a good and free tool that will allow you to convert video files into various video and audio formats.

Processing the clips with Any Video Converter also allowed me to convert the video files into audio clips that I could play in my now-ancient MP3 player.

In converting the downloaded .mp4 videos to play in my Sony Ericsson P1i, I just used the default setting for “mobile phone .mp4.” The only setting I changed was the video size—from the default 176×144 to 320×240, the P1i’s screen size.

After converting the files, I then transferred these to my phone. All the files played flawlessly, including my mp3 conversion.

You might need to play around with the settings to get the optimal version to play in your phone but I suggest you start by tweaking the video size before changing the other settings.

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6 responses

  1. Sherwin Ong Avatar
    Sherwin Ong

    Max, thanks for sharing this to us. I read it also on your column on Sun Star dated March 31, 2009 and here online.

    I do have another video converter. It is free to use. Please go to this link: http://ivcsoft.free.fr/wordpress/?p=191#eng

    Go down and download the exe file. Use the ANSI Version.

    Hope this would be a great help not just to you but to your other readers.

  2. thanks max.. i like your post.i also got tool to convert it to best format to play in phone.do check this site for more info.

  3. … and best Sad song ever: Dylan’s ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’

  4. i want to download a video from youtube at my phone (sony ericsson) but i dont know how??
    its not working with me , so what to do ???

  5. Thank you very much, this works well for me. Finally!

  6. robinson585 Avatar
    robinson585

    How about having Leawo HD Video Converter a try? It can help you to
    convert any video format you want, and it contains more funtion than you can imagine.
    Furthermore, it allows you to convert 2D HD video to 3D files, for playback on
    3D TVs and more compatible 3D devices.

    http://www.leawo.com/hd-video-converter/

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