How To Collect YouTube Videos On Your Mac

What’s the main problem with YouTube videos? Collecting, managing, organizing all the videos. Because YouTube videos are free, it’s easy to begin a collection without figuring out a way to organize the videos.

The teachers in our school use YouTube for video instructions. That means that video collections grow quickly and need to be managed by both student and teachers. There’s no shortage of video management solutions on a Mac. Here is one.

YouTube vs. iMovie

Since all Macs come with iMovie, what’s wrong with using iMovie to store and manage YouTube videos?

The answer is, “Not much.” iMovie is free, included with each Mac, easy for students to use.

The problem is that YouTube videos, when downloaded from YouTube, need to be converted to a file format that iMovie can handle. Again, plenty of Mac utilities do just that.

Some of them cost money, some don’t work too well, others become orphaned utilities—released only to never be updated again.

YouTube Download Utilities

For students and teachers I keep a list of Mac utilities which do just that—download the videos and convert them so they can be stored in iMovie.

iTubeX Ultimate - iTubeX is nicely done and downloads YouTube videos as .mp4 files which can be stored in iMovie or converted to run on iPods or iPhones.

Tooble - Similar to iTubeX is Tooble, a simple utility which lets you search for and view YouTube videos, then download them and convert them to run on your iPod, iPhone or in iMovie.

TubePod - if free is your choice, then TubePod fills the bill with the ability to search YouTube videos, choose a conversion format, convert and save the video for your Mac, iPod, iPhone, iMovie, or iTunes. Not bad for free.

MacTubes - keeping the tradition of free, search, download, and convert, is MacTubes which also lets Mac users manage their YouTube video collection with using iTunes or iMovie.

Of all the YouTube utilities, MacTubes is my favorite and perfect for students. You can search YouTube and play videos within MacTubes as it’s both a player and a downloader.

MacTubes creates playlists, too, acting like a mini-iTunes to keep YouTube videos separate from iTunes or iMovie. It also lets you search YouTube by keywords, related videos, and author. Even HD videos can be viewed, downloaded, and save in MacTubes. Considering the price tag (free), it’s tough to beat for schools where students use Macs.

I won’t hold my breath. It’s unlikely that Apple will build in Flash movie or YouTube movie playback capability to iTunes. Until then, we have to find a utility that does it all.