I love Family Guy. I’m also a Simpsons fan despite what people say about the new episodes. I’m also a guy who enjoys a classic film from the 70′s such as The Sting ““ all while kicking back on the bus or on a flight. For that I’ll need my iPod and of course the videos I want have to actually be on it.

One tiny little snag however; the people who make such films and shows aren’t too keen on us enjoying them for free.

Yeah, sure you can always use a site such as MegaVideo which in my opinion is the best website for films, shows, documentaries and home made clips on the internet. Two things really get on my nerves about that site though.

1. The time limit ““ for some reason you’re restricted to 51 minutes of viewing at any one time. It used to be 72 minutes but they amped it up recently.

2. There is no well-known download option that is free.

Well in this article I’m going to show you a technique I used recently to download Megavideo videos and convert those video files for episodes of my favourite TV shows and loads of films right onto my iPod. For free.

First, go to SurftheChannel and enter in the name of the show you want such as “˜The Office’. I’m using Surf the Channel as it’s the best directory for MegaVideo and other sites such as Vreel and Tudou. This method will also work for those sites.

When you’ve found a good link to the video you want, click on it.

From the video’s page copy the URL. Normally this is an option in the media player. With Megavideo it’s the button below the screen that looks like two forward slashes “˜//’.

Then go to Clipnabber and paste the URL into the box as shown and click “˜Nab It‘. With most other services this will bring you onto the next step but for MegaVideo and Vreel there is one extra step.

If you entered a MegaVideo or Vreel URL then you’ll have to paste the video page’s source code into the box in the screenshot. This is to override extra security measures these services have taken in recent times. To find the source code, simply go to the video’s page. Right-click outside of the video player and select the option to view the page’s code. The exact phrasing of this will differ from browser to browser. In Firefox and Internet Explorer you can simply click “˜Edit‘ along the top menu bar and select “˜View Source‘.

Select all of the code and paste it into ClipNabber. Then click “˜Nab It‘ again. This will bring up a download link. Click on that to download the video.

Once the download has finished you’ll have a .FLV file. This will be playable on media players such as Real Player but it won’t play on most portable devices. You can watch the full video on your PC but if you want to put it on your iPod then there is one more step; you need to convert the video file.

Download any one of these conversion tools featured here in this article on MUO. I’d suggest using the “˜Any Video Converter’ tool as it’s the most basic and it worked a treat for me.

All of these video converters are very basic with three main steps to follow:

1. Select Input File and select your input file.

2. Select Output File location and format (.mp4 for most devices)

3. Press “˜Convert‘ and play the waiting game.

Once the you convert the video file, you will have downloaded a movie from Megavideo and have it sitting on your PC in .mp4 format ready to be transferred to your iPod ““ all without spending a dime!

When you click convert, don’t be tempted to exit the program if it appears nothing’s happening. There is no status bar in most of these programs so it might appear as though there is nothing happening but there is. I almost exited a program just when a little box popped up to tell me the conversion was complete! It should take around 10 minutes to convert a 25 minute episode of a show and considerably longer for a film.

Are you familiar with any other apps or ways to download videos from Megavideo.com?

Tagged: downloader • online videos • video converter