Last year, as we do every year, my wife and I took a bunch of teens to camp for a week in the summer. When we got home, one of my jobs was to create a slide presentation of the week. Basically I had to weed through hundreds of photos to find the ones that described the week in a nutshell (in under 4-5 minutes).
That part was fun. The interesting part of this task was to figure out how to use a camp song in the background of the presentation.
I found a YouTube video of one of the song services containing the song I wanted in the background but I had to figure out how to take the music from the video so I could insert it into the presentation.
After a short search here on MakeUseOf I found several sites that would let me download Youtube videos as an MP3.
Video2mp3
Services like Video2mp3 make downloading YouTube videos as MP3 files a simple 3 step process. It simply allows you to enter the URL, click “convert”, and finally download the MP3 from the provided link.
Grab the YouTube URL:
Head over to video2mp3, enter the YouTube URL there and click “convert“:
Wait a bit for the conversion and then just download the mp3 from the link. Could this service get any simpler? Yes, with a Firefox add-on that adds a link to YouTube video pages to directly convert the video.
Dirpy
Dirpy is not just yet another YouTube MP3 converter. This site has quite a few features that set it apart.
First of all, they have integrated a bookmarklet into the mix making getting a video into the studio as easy as clicking a bookmarklet while on the YouTube video page.
Other features include the ability to set the file name and the start and end time of the MP3.
Basically, take what VideotoMp3 does (an easy 3 step process) and add a few very cool features, and a fun-to-say name, and you have Dirpy.
Vid2MP3
This happens to be the site I stumbled upon when I was doing my presentation and it did the job in a good amount of time. The site looks a bit weird but, like I said, it worked out great.
As it turns out, this site offers the choice between standard and high quality. Using it is as easy as using Video2mp3 and only requires entering the URL:
And downloading the MP3:
And then you’ll actually have to click another link to download it (why?):
Two cool features that VidToMP3 offers are the ability to preview the MP3 in an online player before downloading and the ability to email a friend a link to download the MP3. You will have to excuse quite a few ads on this site but the results are good and timely.
Having this new power to download YouTube videos as MP3 files is helpful. Grab music for presentations or listening to that has not been copyrighted or even grab the audio from instructional or informational videos to listen to while on the go. What other uses can you think of?
What YouTube to mp3 service do you prefer?
Tagged: downloads • mp3 • online videos • Youtube
