Help me fill my fake iPod
October 30, 2010 3:24 PM Subscribe
Help an old and behind the times lady find video to her new non-Apple media player.
Ok, so I grabbed an inexpensive Sansa Fuze off Woot a few weeks ago, thinking it might be nice to have a functioning media player. Although it came with no instructions, I think I can figure out the basics of charging it and loading things onto it. But, dear friends, I am having a hard time figuring out where to get video files to load (the main point of upgrading from my 6-year-old MP3 player was that it had a tiny screen capable of playing tiny video files).
I have used iTunes on occasion, but I generally dislike it and try to use Amazon.com's MP3 store when I buy audio tracks. However, it does not appear that you can purchase video downloads there for uploading to a media player.
I am not opposed to going the YouTube download route, but I have made a stab at several different Chrome bookmarklet/plugin downloaders and have yet to hit on one that, you know, actually works. I am willing to try a non-browser-based downloader, but I am not sure which ones are trustworthy.
I am interested in downloading both music videos and TV episodes/movies. I would actually prefer to pay for content.
Ok, so I grabbed an inexpensive Sansa Fuze off Woot a few weeks ago, thinking it might be nice to have a functioning media player. Although it came with no instructions, I think I can figure out the basics of charging it and loading things onto it. But, dear friends, I am having a hard time figuring out where to get video files to load (the main point of upgrading from my 6-year-old MP3 player was that it had a tiny screen capable of playing tiny video files).
I have used iTunes on occasion, but I generally dislike it and try to use Amazon.com's MP3 store when I buy audio tracks. However, it does not appear that you can purchase video downloads there for uploading to a media player.
I am not opposed to going the YouTube download route, but I have made a stab at several different Chrome bookmarklet/plugin downloaders and have yet to hit on one that, you know, actually works. I am willing to try a non-browser-based downloader, but I am not sure which ones are trustworthy.
I am interested in downloading both music videos and TV episodes/movies. I would actually prefer to pay for content.
I use the Greasemonkey script "YouTube Video Download, which works beautifully. It doesn't use an external site, just gives you a button to access to the URLs for the various file formats that YouTube generates and stores for each video.
posted by bcwinters at 3:35 PM on October 30, 2010
posted by bcwinters at 3:35 PM on October 30, 2010
Best answer: I just bought a Sansa Fuze for my daughter, and we love it.
For videos, we're either ripping from DVD or downloading from YouTube using keep vid, so I'm afraid that I'm not a lot of help on the paying-for-media front. That said, I do have friends who've purchased downloaded video from Blockbuster and have had good luck with it.
I know you said you could figure it out, but can I offer a pointer on the getting-media-on-the-player part? My player didn't have a user guide either, and I spent an unhappy thirty minutes or so trying to figure out why I couldn't make video work.
The catch, it turns out, is that in order to put videos on the Fuze, you have to use a media converter. The Sansa media converter can be downloaded here. Once it's downloaded and installed, you just plug in the Fuze, open files in the media converter, click convert, and then when it's done converting, they're also loaded on the player. There won't be any notification that they've been transferred to the player, but that doesn't mean it didn't work. (She says after having spent twenty minutes cursing at the computer.)
posted by MeghanC at 11:11 PM on October 30, 2010
For videos, we're either ripping from DVD or downloading from YouTube using keep vid, so I'm afraid that I'm not a lot of help on the paying-for-media front. That said, I do have friends who've purchased downloaded video from Blockbuster and have had good luck with it.
I know you said you could figure it out, but can I offer a pointer on the getting-media-on-the-player part? My player didn't have a user guide either, and I spent an unhappy thirty minutes or so trying to figure out why I couldn't make video work.
The catch, it turns out, is that in order to put videos on the Fuze, you have to use a media converter. The Sansa media converter can be downloaded here. Once it's downloaded and installed, you just plug in the Fuze, open files in the media converter, click convert, and then when it's done converting, they're also loaded on the player. There won't be any notification that they've been transferred to the player, but that doesn't mean it didn't work. (She says after having spent twenty minutes cursing at the computer.)
posted by MeghanC at 11:11 PM on October 30, 2010
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I don't know of any places to buy drm free video, which surprises me. You can always rip DVDs, which is a little difficult but definitely doable. I used to use this before my optical drive broke.
I'd say both of those methods are in the grey area of fair use, so I'll let you make your own ethical decisions.
posted by R a c h e l at 3:33 PM on October 30, 2010