ClipGrab

ClipGrab is a piece of software designed to help you easily download videos from the web without using the browser itself. It's quite interesting the way the software is designed, but some find it irritating that the software isn't simply integrated into a browser so it can work from a single pane. However, there are certainly some instances when you would specifically want a separate app, and ClipGrab is ideal for those times.

This software not only has the ability to download videos cleanly from the internet, but it can also convert the format of newly downloaded video files. The software is fully compatible with many of the most prominent video sharing platforms like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, MyVideo, CollegeHumor, Clipfish, Sevenload, Tudou, and MySpass.

Once you've installed the software and found a video you would like to download, you can select whether or not you want to keep the file in its original format or convert it into one of the many formats available in ClipGrab. These common formats include WMV, OGG, MP3, MPEG4, and other portable formats. However, some users have said that the conversion feature has issues with some formats and some video platforms, so it might be limited to converting only certain starting formats.

There are a number of settings you can alter to change how your files are downloaded. From the many drop down menus near the top of the app window, you can make these changes. For instance, you can select the Quality drop down menu and find the HD option so that your videos will be downloaded in HD if an HD version of the video is available.

Another interesting feature of ClipGrab is that it can detect whenever a link is saved to the clipboard through the Growl notification system, and it will give you the option to auto download those files as well. ClipGrab downloads files at an exceptionally quick rate compared to other apps in the same category.

One of the only real negatives associated with ClipGrab is that there's no way to integrate it with your web browser, so you're forced to use it as a separate app. Of course, you can cut and paste as many links from the browser to the download queue as you would like, so this is a minor inconvenience at most.

Anyone who needs to download and convert video files from a number of different platforms in a quick and efficient manner should consider ClipGrab.

The most recent version of ClipGrab saw a number of updates, including improved MP3 file tagging, new support for YouTube download pages, and greater support for converting ffmpeg to OGG Vorbis files.

While there are certainly other options in the category of video downloading and converting, ClipGrab is an excellent free option that performs much of the advanced utility you'd expect to find in a premium app.