VIXY- Convert YouTube Videos to Many Formats

Jim and myself have often found great clips on YouTube or other online video sites but that site is blocked by our school filter. It was a pain to capture these videos and covert them but no longer. . .
Vixy will allow you to freely convert the flash video into a number of other formats including video iPod compatible. Just throw in the URL and presto chango.
Another neat option is the ability to choose an audio only version as an export. I have done this in the past the hard way with TED talks (highly recommended if you don’t checked them out) since I am too poor to afford a new video iPod.

Via Net@Night

-Edit 12-19

Another option to get YouTube videos

Like most teachers, I have to contend with the filtering of You Tube at work. The solution is fairly simple, just follow the download link at the top of the You Tube page to get the video, and rename the downloaded file with a .flv extension. Next, get the free FLV Player from here and be grateful to Martijn de Visser for this great little application (which you obviously need to install secretly in school!)

from Digital Geography

4 thoughts on “VIXY- Convert YouTube Videos to Many Formats

  1. I’ve been getting some great tips from your blog, thanks.

    I’m wondering, is it so impossible for teachers to access sites blocked by the filter? Can’t your IT dept make exceptions for teacher use? I just don’t think the law was meant to keep learning from happening. I’m the sole librarian and IT person at my school, so it’s easy for me to say, but I just don’t get IT departments that are unwilling to bend a little to further education.

  2. Surrural Librarian,

    Teachers are currently under the same filter as the students.

    We’re in a slightly unique situation. Since all high school and middle school students have laptops and wireless access at every school the powers that be have a pretty strict filter in place. I don’t think it is meant to restrict learning either but the fact is that sometimes it does. For instance currently I can’t get to anything with the word blog in the URL. You’d be surprised how many sites that includes. We are working on changing things and I think making good progress but it is a slow process for many reasons.

    I am virtually positive that we’ll never have YouTube unblocked and I can see some of the rational for that. This gives teachers a nice option and a lot more control.  I might even use this if YouTube wasn’t blocked as it’d be tempting to wander off on that site for sure 🙂
    Thanks for taking the time to write,

    Tom

  3. We have pretty strict filters in place in my district, too.

    I have found that this is not so much of a problem if you know well in advance what you want to do. There is usually some way to get the job done. It is generally very hard or impossible to do something spontaneous, though. It can be very frustrating.

    Sigh…

    Art Lader
    http://www.4germanteachers.com

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