Thread: Setting YouTube as screensavers

Setting VouTube videos as screensavers. You saw a funny short film on YouTube and you want to set it as your screensaver. However, Windows XP cannot make out head or tail of that video format.

The following three steps will help you achieve your goal. You must download the video, convert it, and then turn it into a screensaver file.

DOWNLOADiNG THE VIDEO

There is an add-on for Firefox called 'Fast Video Download and install the add-on by clicking 'Tools Add-ons' and drag the downloaded file into the Firefox window and click on install. After the installation, restart the browser. Open the desired YouTube video and click on the 'Fast Video Download' button. In the 'Save As .. .' dialog, select a location and confirm with 'OK'.

CONVERTING VIDEO

Next, convert the video into the Flash format. The free tool 'Super' by Erightsoft is suitable for that. . Once you have downloaded the tool, install and start it. Right-click on the program window, select 'Add Multimedia File' and open the saved FLV file. Under 'Select the Output Container' select the entry 'swf or flv (Flash)' as the output format. Super saves the output file in 'C:\Programs\eRightSoft\ SUPER\Output'. To change that, right-click on the program interface, select 'Output File Saving Management', navigate to the desired folder and confirm with 'Save changes'. Now to encode the video, click on 'Encode (Active Files)' and select 'SWF'.

CREATING THE SCREENSAVER

In the first dialog box, open the 'New Project Wizard'. Decide a name and click on 'Next'. In the next step, select 'Browse' and navigate to the prepared SWF file. The preview shows the video. Confirm this dialog with 'Next' as well. In the third step, you can select a preview image if needed, which will be visible in the installation dialog of the screensaver. Lastly, click on 'Next' and 'Close' successively. Coming back to the main program window, you can make further settings in the different tabs available. For example, in the 'General' tab you can decide whether the video should be 'Fit to Window' or in the original size of '100%' and which versio~ of Flash Player is suitable to play the video. Finally, click on 'Create' under 'Publishing'. Name EXE file created and click on 'Save'.

INSTALLING THE SCREENSAVER

The rest is simple. Just double-click the EXE file. It installs the screensaver that you just created. It can then be managed through the Display Settings dialog box as usual.