[R_burke]

1) is it legal
2) is there a good s/w for it

There are several shows/songs I'd like to get that aren't available elsewhere

[Rclark]

Youtube sounds sooooo bad though.

[srb]

The quality of YouTube audio (and video) varies greatly.  On many videos, you have the option to select the video resolution (240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, etc.) by clicking on the gear icon of the control bar.  Selecting the highest possible video resolution will usually give a correspondingly higher audio bitrate, upwards of 192kbps, which can sound fairly good.

You can record (in realtime) the audio portion with free Audacity recording software, available for both PC and Mac.  On the PC platform, to record internal sounds you will need to set the Recording Device to "Stereo Mix", "Wave Out" or something similar depending on your particular setup.

I would assume recording any copyrighted material is not legal.

Steve

[Larkston Zinaspic]

You can also enter "Youtube to mp3" in Google's searchbar and use one of the resulting links to do the conversion for you, since it's free. (My apologies if you've already tried that. ) I've used ListenToYouTube.com for this purpose, and aside from the popup ads and the little bit of a wait for the file to convert, it seems to deliver as promised.

Sometimes I just want to transcribe something a guitarist is doing in a video by ear, like Troubleclef or hyperboreal, Per-Olov Kindgren, etc., and in that case it's just more handy for me to grab the audio track for my own purposes. Not sure of the legal issues but I'd probably be more concerned about scanning any downloads for viruses first.


~Greg

[AB]

Streamripper was one way of doing this. I don't know if it still works or even exists.

[WC]

On a Mac you can use Audio Hijack Pro to capture the audio.

[srb]

I have just tried both methods, one generating an MP3 using ListenToYouTube.com and the other by recording with Audacity.  I'm perceiving better sound quality with the Audacity recording.  However, my filesize is ~ 6 times as large, as I don't want to take an already compressed mpeg stream and compress it again with recording so I am outputting my recording as a 16/44.1 AIFF file.

Over the next few days I'll try some additional YouTube test subjects and see if I have a consensus of better quality across the board or not and report back.

Steve

[charmerci]

You can also enter "Youtube to mp3" in Google's searchbar and use one of the resulting links to do the conversion for you, since it's free. (My apologies if you've already tried that. ) I've used ListenToYouTube.com for this purpose, and aside from the popup ads....

~Greg

Looks like you need www.adblockplus.org software!

[Noseyears]

I believe youtube audio is 128kbps ACC, it will be always poor quality no matter what you do. Why not listen to your favorite songs on a streaming service such as grooveshark?

[decal]

You Tube(crappy audio) to mp3(crappy audio)= more crappy audio.

[jmc207]

Take a look at SnipMP3.com (audio only) and KeepVid.com (video). Requires Java plugin in your browser.