Exporting youtube videos to dvd format

Hey guys, a while I haven't been here. Since two weeks ago I started going to a capoeira class here in UK, maybe trying to get back to my roots : ) I found some good lessons on youtube and other similar sites, but as my room is not that big to train capoeira inside : ) I had thought in recording them into dvd format. It came out quite tricky to find the right set of tools to do the job.

So here goes my how-to:

1- Downloading youtube videos in flv format:

You need first to get the video from any video website. For this we will use a firefox plugin called Video DownloadHelper. If you are not using firefox, a good chance for you to get rid of evil ms iexplorer. Install the plugin in the following page:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

After installing it and going to your favorite video page, you will see an animated icon at the right side of the address bar:

Don't get scared with the image above, that's me playing harmonica with a sort of Andy Warhol's painting filter to the camera :)

2- Converting from flv to mpg4

This one was the hardest to find. There is quite a lot of apps that do the job, but most that i found you could use for free with a logo watermark on it, so not that useful, or you would have to pay for it. well, I ended up finding SUPER, which is a Universal Player Encoder & Renderer. It does the job well, even working in batch mode with loads of files, as it was my case. They have a good slogan which i confirm as true : "SUPER © does for FREE what other encoders CAN'T do for money.". So if you want to donate and make them happy, click here :) and if you want to make me happy, please check the google links on the top or botton :P Finding the link to download that would work was the trickest part. You can try the following ones:
http://www.erightsoft.info/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe
http://www.erightsoft.net/S6Kg1.html
If it doesn't work, try in another browser, i had to use evil ms internet explorer, can you believe it? : ) well, nothing can be so easy, isn't? Just to give some challenge to the task :)

They say the following related to the problem of downloading:

To download from this site without looping back to the same page you need to:
Enable your JavaScript, clear your MSIE cache, do not block your http_referrer (with ZoneAlarm or similar), do not use a proxy.
Queries concerning this issue will not be answered. We do not know any other answer to give.

After installing, when running, to do a quick transformation use the following settings:

Actually the only thing I've changed was the first line: output container -> MPG4, output video codec -> DIVX and output audio codec-> AAC. The rest was default already. One thing that is not so intuitive is how to set the output folder. You need to right click and choose the "Output File Save Management". To choose the files you want to convert, you can right click and choose "Add Multimedia File(s)". After everything ready, hit "Encode (Active files)" button and wait the files to be processed.

3- Creating a dvd with the files

Up to this moment you could already burn a CD with the files and play at most of new dvds. But if you want to burn a DVD you will need an app that can convert conventional MPG files into DVD format. Most os applications that burn DVD are paid, like nero. But as I wouldn't let you without an alternative, I discovered this really cool opensource project that came out quite good and easy to use. It's called dvdflick, an opensource project from sourceforge. Use the following link to download it:
http://www.dvdflick.net/download.php
It was released last month (september), but it looks really good and stable, and with the same features of the other apps.

• Main window- Adding media files

• Configuring the project:

You need to choose the second option only (burn the project to the disc), if you choose both you will get an error message and if you don't choose any nothing will be saved in the DVD.

• Generating the dvd.

This following windows will appear when you press the "Create DVD" button in the main window:


Conclusion

As you could see, it's not rocket science to get a bunch of videos from youtube playing in a DVD. It's just about finding the right tools for the right job : ) And all free (and mainly: without limitations) tools so that might facilitate things for everyone.

Also, most of the previous softwares shown here use ffmpeg command line tool. This is the big guy when talking about sound and video conversion.

Hope this might be useful to you guys, feel free to leave suggestions or critics.

Emerson