Help Me Stop Watching My iPod With My Glasses Off, Please

July 16, 2007 2:04 PM

Audio and video are out of sync on mp4s downloaded from Google Video about 80% of the time. Is there anything simple that I can do about this? OSX, by the way, and it's mostly for watching on my iPod.
posted by interrobang to Technology (2 answers total)

How are you downloading these MP4s? What I like to do is first download the AVI. A lot of people do not know this, but you can get the AVI straight from Google's servers.

Step 1: Find a Google video

Step 2: Click on the 'Manually download the video' link

Step 3: Open the .gvp file with notepad and you will see something like:

# download the free Google Video Player from http://video.google.com/
gvp_version:1.1
url:http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0&secureurl=uQAAACcUtqOvEkTTbTUwLwnPPCkrOx_TTF5sc4IdghSXbsYH9CEsFN9N_93TbZVsGV5l-3F8Agdn0XI0LqaF3iGV2FbnxAf9-VWb2VvcimtO1LIHpaEe9qwmg615sI5K-O4tNJsSHl29a9FZek9qsNukPe5JAmH2rqbaFeyTxtJE6-TmhH8Dsw-jf8b02WGB2JfIf-cZw61fyHC3yEeNQkWF9VVTLm6WneR0XnmDsfU682MvVfKUGyLYXFp_JPUzIT64BQ&sigh=dIe4llN7TySgVkshFixmETDy-ik&begin=0&len=129467&docid=1806507480014945777
docid:1806507480014945777
duration:129467
title:Chipmunk Singing "Bad Day"
description:Here is a video of my good friend singing Bad Day. My Friend is a chipmunk YES


The part you are looking for is http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0&secureurl=uQAAACcUtqOvEkTTbTUwLwnPPCkrOx_TTF5sc4IdghSXbsYH9CEsFN9N_93TbZVsGV5l-3F8Agdn0XI0LqaF3iGV2FbnxAf9-VWb2VvcimtO1LIHpaEe9qwmg615sI5K-O4tNJsSHl29a9FZek9qsNukPe5JAmH2rqbaFeyTxtJE6-TmhH8Dsw-jf8b02WGB2JfIf-cZw61fyHC3yEeNQkWF9VVTLm6WneR0XnmDsfU682MvVfKUGyLYXFp_JPUzIT64BQ&sigh=dIe4llN7TySgVkshFixmETDy-ik&begin=0&len=129467&docid=1806507480014945777
docid:1806507480014945777
duration:129467
title:Chipmunk Singing "Bad Day"


*(Ignore the fact that Mefi breaks up the URL into multiple lines. If you follow these steps you will see that the URL is one strand.)

Plug that into your browser and watch Google offer you the AVI.

Yes, you have to convert the file to MP4 but it is likely that you are using a web service for the current downloads of MP4s that are giving you problems. This solution put everything in your hands.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 12:27 PM on July 17, 2007

Response by poster: I'll try that. Thank you very much!
posted by interrobang at 5:07 PM on July 17, 2007