TubeSock 1.0.1

Reviewed by Dr. Eric Flescher

Introduction

YouTube became an instant sensation. Connecting to other videos used by others and uploading yours so that they could be popular videos seen by others, quickly became one of the hottest innovations on the internet. This took social networking to another level. This application became such a big deal that might Google bought it for over a billion dollars! The two gentleman who started up You Tube then did not have to worry about whether You Tube would pay off for them. There was a reason to purchase You Tube and now others are beginning to find other ways to work with it. One of these I found is TubeSock 1.0.

This shareware product (cost is $15 and includes frequent updates) installs easy enough on to your computer desktop. The application appears as “ a diagonal band aid over an orange square.” It does not say to copy to the Application folder on your hard drive but this can be accomplished later. This application works on the desktop as is, or can be placed in the Application folder and/or have an icon on the dock for use. I started with it on the desktop by clicking on the application.

The window interface opened up. The shareware allows 30 seconds of video using and saving. To get the most out of the product, one needs to pay the shareware fee to utilize TubeSock for a longer amount of time. To give it a spin, I found my site at You Tube. I quickly found that I could not click and find the one of my selected videos that I placed to share on my You Tube area. To port and use the video(s) each one needs to locate the website address on You Tube to work with and then copy and past the website url into the TubeSock.

Before you do anything there are some choices. Options include adding the video to the Movie folder, iTunes or some other area. Also video can be saved to any video iPod, an audio MP3 file or non video iPod versions, video PSP (MP4), Mac or flash file. This application automatically determines the appropriate file format, bitrate, and naming convention for the selected target device (which you can determine). There is no loss of sound compression on You Tube as well as TubeSock. The TubeSock window can be moved around to position itself in different parts of the screen.

Clicking on the SAVE button at the left bottom of the TubeSock interface, starts the conversion process. Immediately the SAVE button is replaced by CANCEL, (the bar to right) shimmers showing it has started converting the video and the bottom displays “ Unregistered copy, only converting a few seconds of video... . I waited.

After about 10 minutes, text on the bottom showed “ Compression completed.” I did not know where the movie was saved. But I guessed since I had clicked on placing the converted file in the Movies section on my hard drive it would be there . A Quicktime file with the same name as the video file from the You Tube movie was there. I could then play and see it was the same file and worked as well as it said. I figured that if desired the name of the file could be changed in the regular way by clicking on the name text and replacing.

The toolbar menu bar works. The TubeSock help menu says “There is no help for it.” I found that TubeSock can install a bookmark for Safari and Firefox. When you browse to a YouTube video you like, simply click the bookmark button. The video will instantly appear in TubeSock. Without an iPod, the video can be played full-screen with FrontRow and using your Apple Remote. In addition, future releases of TubeSock will support other web-based video services, such as Google Video, Porkolt and others.

YouTube is a hit and I slowly am using it more and more. I see many possibilities for TubeSock. This application is fairly easy to use, is versatile and the price is reasonable for what it does. There will be more updates and improvements but for now it does a good job. Get out and try it now.