Thread: Tapping portals

The Internet is swarming with awesome videos and exciting video clips. Most of them are available on YouTube; however there are a plethora of websites, portals and tools which offer entertainment for an entire evening. We show how to access the best broadcasting channels and how to download your favorite TV shows to your computer.

DOWNLOADING ClIPS:

YouTube is the biggest video portal, but it is not the best. Some quick and useful functions, for instance, a direct download link, are missing. But you can correct these oversights by switching to the Web browser Firefox and loading it with the Greasemonky plug-in. Greasemonkey is a powerful tool with which you can integrate more tools and optimize websites to suit your own needs. This is installed like
any other add-on. Browse to the official Firefox add-ons Web page input 'Greasemonkey in the search field, and download and install the XPI file.



Alternatively, you may open the 'Add-ons' window from 'Tools I Add-ons' and enter the phrase in the 'Get Add-ons' tab. Next, browse to the website to get scripts to incorporate into Greasemonkey. Pick and choose the snippets you need, we shall focus on those that aid in online videos treaming. First up are the YouTube extensions, the most popular of which is 'YouTube Blackout'. Just press the 'Install this script' button on the Web page, to enhance your YouTube watching experience, as this script blacks out the rest of the YouTube Web page when you are watching a video. So next time, instead of viewing clips on the website, click on the 'Blackout' link that appears with each video after the installation of the plug-in. The video opens in a pop-up window with a semi-transparent background, called 'Lightbox'. Elements like 'Related Videos' appear darkened and do not distract the viewer anymore.

Another handy script is 'YouTube Enhancer'. It adds a link below every video, from which you can directly download the clip to your computer in the form of a Flash video. It has its drawbacks though-you have to redefine the video and add the FLV extension, otherwise Windows does not correctly identify the video and fails to play it. Using this handy script, you can successfully downloaded the clips onto your PC.

RECORDING TV:

Now that you have streaming television content playing on the computer, it is time to set up your video recorder to tape those shows you don't want to miss. While it is impossible to connect your VCR t6 the PC without a card in between, here is a way to record TV shows. CamStudio, a screen capturing tool, is great in this scenario, since it comes with a tool to record the monitor into a Flash (SWF) or AVI file. The XP codec packet should be installed for good results during the recording. Although
CamStudio comes with its own codec, you will get much better results with the ffdshow video codec installed on your PC.
After the installation of the ffdshow codec, you need to set CamStudio to use it. In the main application window, go to 'Options I Video Options I Compressor'. Set the quality of the compressor on '100'. Advanced users can further tweak the recording settings in 'Configure'.

Now open up the Web page, for instance, 'Bigg Boss2' in your Web browser, select an episode and hit the play button to start the buffering process. Switch to the CamStudio application, and select 'Region I Region' and press 'Record'-the cursor now appears as a cross-wire. Draw a rectangle around the video screen and the recording starts automatically. Do not forget-you should not scroll down the Web page since this will shift the video player and the recording will be faulty since CamStudio records only the predefined area. Once the transmission is done, save the AVI or SWF file to your computer.