predsednic Posted October 3, 2010 Share Posted October 3, 2010 I want to use a sample from a youtube video. I want to make sure I download the best audio quality of that video. I got a feeling that when I use popular youtube downloaders, they always compress sound a bit. What tools do you recommend? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inadase Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 Audio Hijack http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
predsednic Posted October 5, 2010 Author Share Posted October 5, 2010 Thank you, inadase. So you think that "hijacking" it trough Audio Hijack is better than downloading it and extracting audio from video - regarding sound quality? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
camillo jr Posted October 5, 2010 Share Posted October 5, 2010 Here's two more audio grabber recommendations: http://twistedwave.com/ http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wiretap/ Wiretap will grab whatever format is coming at it and can also convert on the fly. Here's a video grabber if you don't already have one, although this can be done via Safari. http://stinkbot.com/Tubesock/ My understanding is that the quality you hear is the quality you get. The YouTube audio format is basically flash vids or MP4s for higher quality. Also try: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-extract-audio-from-flv-files-mac-only/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
predsednic Posted October 6, 2010 Author Share Posted October 6, 2010 Thank you so much for all this info, camillo jr! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzfilth Posted October 6, 2010 Share Posted October 6, 2010 Grabbing is built into Safari. - Play the youtube video. - Open Safari>Windows>Activity - There's one item that's counting up. This is the video- or audiostream. Select it and Copy - Paste it into Safari>Windows>Downloads. This will initiate a download of the source file to your computer - Open the resulting file in Quicktime and File>Export to WAV or AIFF. Christian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
predsednic Posted October 7, 2010 Author Share Posted October 7, 2010 Awesome trick, Christian. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redlogic Posted October 9, 2010 Share Posted October 9, 2010 Christian, When I try your steps, I can't get Quicktime to open the file. I tried several different videos and got the same error message each time. Get Info on the file says it's a plain text file. Any idea what's going on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzfilth Posted October 9, 2010 Share Posted October 9, 2010 No. Works perfectly fine here. Christian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beer Moth Posted October 9, 2010 Share Posted October 9, 2010 You need to change the extension of the file name. .flv http://perian.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redlogic Posted October 10, 2010 Share Posted October 10, 2010 OK WTF is going on?! I followed Christian's original steps exactly......error message Beer Moth said: You need to change the extension of the file name. .flv http://perian.org/ I installed Perian. On the site, there's a video explaining how Perian works. The guy says to choose the file named "get video". He also says it will be the biggest file of the bunch. {It's not...it has a size of Zero KB on disk (zero bytes)} So, anyway, I try the "get video" file...I change the extension to .flv and try to open it with Quicktime......same error message. So I try the file Christian mentioned (The "one item that's counting up") This is the biggest file. I change the extension to .flv and try to open it with Quicktime......same error message. I noticed Perian seems to be from the "Tiger" era but it says, "Mac OS X 10.4.7 or higher". Also I'm using Safari 5.0.2 Has something changed? Christian, Do you have to change the file extension to .flv? Do you have Perian installed? Any idea what's going on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzfilth Posted October 10, 2010 Share Posted October 10, 2010 Do you have to change the file extension to .flv?Do you have Perian installed? Any idea what's going on? Neither of the three. Post the URL and I try to recreate the problem. Christian EDIT: Just found a file that downloads without extension. It opens in TextEdit and begins with FLV... Adding the .flv file extension to the name lets me open it in FLV-Playerjust fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redlogic Posted October 10, 2010 Share Posted October 10, 2010 I"m officially losing my mind. I tried 4 or 5 different YouTube videos......error message Tried Hey Jude......FIXED IT!!! Went back and tried the ones that didn't work before......they all work now. All this with Perian installed and changing the file extension to .flv Oh well...All in a hard day's night I guess. Thanks guys! ...and Beatles 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshuash Posted April 24, 2021 Share Posted April 24, 2021 I"m officially losing my mind. I tried 4 or 5 different YouTube videos......error message Tried Hey Jude......FIXED IT!!! Went back and tried the ones that didn't work before......they all work now. All this with Perian installed and changing the file extension to .flv Oh well...All in a hard day's night I guess. Thanks guys! ...and Beatles 8) This is really funny very much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xenomorg Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 Use this: https://youtube-dl.org/ Might take a bit of setting up but once it's running it's the easiest thing I've found. AudioHijack is realtime whereas this is super fast. Once installed, the following terminal command will extract the audio from the youtube link in wav format. -x means extract, so you just get audio, no video. As far as I can tell from googling, youtube-dl automatically selects the highest quality encoding available when downloading. youtube-dl -x --audio-format wav 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y73kxcubDBE' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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