Digital Musings

Written on November 6, 2007 – 5:00 pm | by Vikram |

YouTube.com is the most popular video sharing website on the internet. You can upload your own videos, share and comment on others. Listed below is the collection of various tools and resources that can enhance your Youtube experience and help you in Video integration on your Blog or website. Also listed are some of the websites where you can fine the most sought after YouTube videos.

Tools to integrate YouTube in your Blog/Website:

• TubePress: It’s a WordPress plugin that displays YouTube video galleries in your blog. It’s highly configurable, easy to use, and 100% free. The link given is for the Demo page to show how it would look on your webpage. The download link is on top right corner of that page.
• Viper’s Video Quicktags : WP plugin creates a bunch of new quicktags / WYSIWYG buttons via the great PHP class, ButtonSnap. When you click on the quicktags / buttons, it prompts you for the video’s URL and then inserts XHTML valid code into your post or page. Quick and Easy!
• WordPress Related Videos Plugin : Uses tags to look for related videos on YouTube, displays the three most recent related videos on your WordPress blog post.The best part is the related videos automatically.
• WP-FLV : WordPress plugin simplifies the process of inserting flash video files (FLV) inside a WordPress post or page.
• Wordpress Favourite YouTube Videos : Wordpress plugin / widget to display, in a very configurable manner, your latest favorite videos from Youtube.
• Anarchy Media player : Auto embeds href links to mp3, flv, mov, mp4, m4v, m4a, m4b, 3gp, wmv, avi and asf media. Adds buttons to the rich text editor to embed Flash swf, Director dcr, YouTube, Google Video, iFilm, DailyMotion, Metacafe, MySpace and GoEar players.
• YouTube badge maker : This tool will show your viewers images of your 6 most recently uploaded videos.
• WPvideo : This plugin allow you to insert flash videos (YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe…) in your own post or pages in an easy way, can display more info about video (Title, author, description, etc…) and let users download the video.
• YouTube Wordpress Plugin : Display YouTube videos on your Wordpress blog according to Tags.
• YouTube Video Gallery Wordpress Plugin : Displays a gallery of videos from Youtube.com. The styling of the Gallery is done through a simple CSS format provided on the Plugin page.
• YouTube Brackets : This plugin allows you to send YouTube video’s to your standalone Wordpress blog directly from YouTube.com.
• WP-Noembeder :Will insert “noemded” sections into any embed tags for readers that cannot display embedded content (eg. RSS readers). The message it displays is customizable and it will also display a thumbnail image for Youtube videos (using the Youtube API). Great Plugin for Video Blogs!
• Revver Video Wordpress Plugin: Whether you’re new to videoblogging or a seasoned content producer, the Revver Wordpress Video Plugin gives you all the tools you need to create your own personalized video sharing solution. Publish, manage, and track your video content all without ever leaving your own website, and even allow your subscribers to submit their own video responses to your posts! It’s your own interactive video portal, made simple with Revver and Wordpress.

Third Party Scripts and Tools to Enhance your YouTube Experience:

• YouTube Widget : This widget allows you to search, browse, and play videos from YouTube. Simply type in what you’re looking for, and click on the video to view it within the widget. The video opens in a new widget window, which is resizeable.
  Your default screen can be set in the preferences to show several different categories. From Just Added to Most Discussed, you can see the headlining videos right on your dashboard.
• YouTube Podcaster : This tool makes a Podcast feed from your submitted keyword or url. The feed is made up from embedded Youtube video IDs and all videos are converted to the MP4 file format. (This service is down at times, Check Later if its down.)
• fTube : It’s a YouTube player that downloads (using YouTube’s REST API) the list of 25 most recent videos featured on the YouTube front page. The user can select a video from the list and hit the play button to play it in-Flash.
• Youtube Video Slideshow : Its a fast version of YouTube search. It even lets you save the results via Drag and Drop interface.
• Overstream : This tool lets you add subtitles to online videos, specially useful if the Video is multi Lingual targeted at English language users or vice versa. And if its a silent video you can always make it comic by adding your own subtitles according to the actions performed.
• YouTube Userscripts : A collection of 39 scripts created to perform several functions with YouTube. It can add a different look and functions to the way you use YouTube Videos.
• TubeCH : Its in Japanese language, all you need to do is to type the YouTube Video URL, and it displays YouTube video in Flash Player.
• MemoriesOnWeb : MemoriesOnWeb is a powerful yet simple to use slideshow freeware . It’s designed for folks who want to create photo/video slideshows easily and upload to free video hosts like YouTube to share it with friends and family.
• YoutubeCrazyVideos : Its a free Youtube videos desktop player.
• YouTube API Extraction Tool : PHP script that taps into the YouTube API to deliver videos by tag, by YouTube Username or what’s a current favorite.
• TvTube : For Mac users. Allows you to browse YouTube, Google Video and Yahoo Videos, for movie clips that people upload, choose your favorite clips and add them to your shared library.
• Search The Tube : A quick way to find videos for your website, blog or profile. Just type in the searh Term and related videos would pop up.
• IndexTube : This is a categorized and browsable index of the publicly available Youtube videos. It provides clean, well categorized and easily browsable index of the publicly available videos.
• vConvert : vConvert enables anyone to save Youtube videos and simultaneously converting them to formats compatible with mobile phones, iPhone, iPod, PSP, and more. Simply enter the YouTube URL and select which format to convert to. Users can also strip the audio from Youtube videos and convert it to an MP3 file..

Various Tools to Download and save Youtube Videos:

• YouRipper : YouRipper is a small, easy to use utility which enables the end-user to download videos from the major video sharing websites such as YouTube. YouRipper also enables Webmasters, Bloggers and MySpace Hosts to Embed videos from YouTube etc into their own pages, using a generic, fully customizable video player.
• GooTube FLV Retriever : You just enter the video page URL on the Webpage and download the youtube video. Thats easy huh!
• YouTube Downloader : Another similar service, just enter url and download YouTube videos. (Under Maintenance when I checked, but I have used it before)
• Youtube-dl : It is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.4 or later.
• VideoDL : It is a quick AJAX application that allows you to download online video into your computer. At present it supports top 3 video sites - YouTube, Google Video, and Break.com.
• YouTubeX : This one allows you to save and download YouTube videos easily with the help of or directly from your browser, either Firefox or Internet Explorer.
• Delutube : Deleted Youtube video viewer.
• Save YouTube Videos : Again similar to before just paste the Youtube video url and download the video.
• Capture Youtube and Google videos : Save the YouTube videos as AVI files encoded in the MPEG4 format. All it requires is a single command.A bit technical for few people including me.
• Youtube Grabber : Youtube Grabber is a free tool that downloads FLV files from youtube. Simply copy and paste the URL of a video from youtube into the program, press grab OR enter, and the file will be downloaded into the same directory as the program.
• KeepVid : Download videos direct from most video sites like YouTube.
• Download YouTube via bookmarklets : A collection of Greasemonkey scripts and bookmarklets to do the job.
• TubeSock : TubeSock grabs the YouTube videos from the web and copies them to your video iPod, Mac, or PlayStation Portable.
• Video Downloader : Its a firefox extension that allows you to download videos to your computer from YouTube and almost every other famous Video website.
• Down This Video : This Website allows anyone to download video directly from the web, just by pasting the URL of the video in the box, and clicking Download.

Sites/Blogs with The Best of YouTube Videos Collection:

• Best of YouTube : A blog that selects and displays the best Youtube videos.
• Vidspedia -: It is a collection of the best Google and YouTube videos, submitted and rated by users.
• Viral Video Chart :This site tracks the world’s most blogged about videos including GooTube and MySpace.
• Youtube top-rated - A website featuring 1,001 top rated videos from YouTube updated every week.
• PureVideo : This one’s very specific, it collects Top videos around the web, like YouTube, ESPN, HollyWood UpClose, Stupidvideos etc.
• Top YouTube Videos : This website has a daily updated section of the most popular videos from YouTube.
• The World Internet TV charts : This one tracks the most popular video clips from four leading Internet TV sites.
• Webmunism: Categorizes Youtube videos with related flickr photos.

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If you know anymore resources that I might have missed please suggest them in the comments!

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