Find solution
How to save captured digital video as individual clips?

How to capture clips from streaming video on a Mac?

  • Is there a good way to capture short clips from online streaming videos on a Mac? I would like to capture, save, and replay short clips (from a few seconds to a few minutes) from an online streaming video source. In case it matters, I am in the US and I want to do this for the purpose of commentary and criticism. I am running Mac OS 10.6, but could possibly upgrade. A few months ago, I tried googling video capture software and I downloaded one of the higher-ranked results, but the quality of captured video was a lot worse than the original stream. I've also searched Ask Metafilter, but previous questions I've found are either a) specifically about capturing the audio only from a video stream, b) focused on Windows software, and/or c) so old as to be outdated, probably.

  • Answer:

    http://www.videolan.org/index.html should be able to do it. I've used it to record web radio before without any hitches, it's famously able to handle lots of different kinds of media, and here's a http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/vlc-streaming.html on how to capture video with it. (The author is using Linux, but the interfaces are pretty similar.) Give it a whirl.

Orinda at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

Have you tried doing a video capture using http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/01/15/how-to-record-quick-easy-screencast-videos-with-mac-osx/? The quality is decent and you don't need to buy anything.

Cuke

neckro23

I use http://www.downthemall.net/main/about-dta/, works pretty well for most Youtube flash videos.

emjaybee

singingfish

If all else fails I like to use screen capture software for this, in my case Screenflow. It captures the whole screen but you can then crop it to just the frame of video before exporting the video. It does mean you want to leave your computer alone while recording.

dumbland

If one of the download plugins doesn't work -- and they don't work for many, many sites (at least, the 15 or so plugins I tried recently didn't work on all the half-dozen news sites I tried them on) AND if you can't figure out the video's source file in the source code (look for .mp4 or other video suffixes and see if there's a whole URL or a relative one you can reconstitute), then http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/ is your best bet. It records video and audio, offers many options for quality and compression, and, if you make the video full-screen on capture and then size its dimensions down a bit on conversion to the format you want, even crappy videos can turn out pretty well. You can also record the Mac's mic as you record the video, which could make doing commentaries easy.

Mo Nickels

VLC is definitely the go-to app for this on the Mac.

Thorzdad

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.