Mozilla Firefox DownloadHelper - getting YouTube downloads to play at full length on mp4 player?

[pluperfect]

I have a Creative XFi mp4 player (the sort that will play BBC iplayer content).

DH recently showed me about a new add-on for Mozilla Firefox, called the DownloadHelper, which allows you to download videos from YouTube in various formats (including wma, which is what my mp4 player takes).

I have downloaded the Thomas and Friends theme song (not a full episode), to play to DS at odd moments while out and about, but although the file will play in full on my computer, it cuts off the last bit when played on my mp4 player. That is: the original file is 41 seconds, but it only plays 30 seconds on my player. The Diggerland promo video (again, not really an intellectual property issue, so please don't flame me!) is about 2 minutes, but plays only about 1:41 when downloaded to the player.

I have tried using both the player's Creative software and Windows Media Player to synch the files to the computer.

It could just be an intellectual property protection mechanism, which I am happy to accept, as long as I know it is not just that I have done something stupid!

Many thanks for any comments or ideas!

Have you some other PC on which you could view the contents of the MP3 player, to see if it is getting the full file size copied to it?

Just that it seems odd for a number of seconds to 'go missing' when you play, and makes me suspect that for some reason the transfer is not really complete, so the last portion is not being stored.

Thanks for thinking about this. Yes, I can see the contents of the player, which is how I know the file size has been reduced. I just wondered wheher this was something in the Download Helper code. Very impressive, if so!

Is that 'Download Helper' from Creative ? I just wonder whether it is actually compressing the content, a little, or whether there may be some known bug in that software.

I don't have that player - but it may be worth a look online for complaints from other users. I'll do the same.

The software is from Mozilla. not Creative. I know Mozilla is very hot on being part of the Open Source movement, but that does not mean they are totally immune to pressure about intellectual property rights, which could be an issue with some of YouTube's content!

I'll have a look at the Mozilla documentation about DownloadHelper itself; they might address this in their "known issues" section; they seem fairly open about faults.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Try this it works much better!

www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-YouTube-to-MP3-Converter.htm

Sounds handy for the audio Lurve, but what if the OP wants to view the video (MP4 player) ?

Sorry, been a hectic week, will have a look for other utils. IP rights could be part of the issue, I suppose...

It has it all on there. The MP3 is just a small part of the studio. here try this link.

www.dvdvideosoft.com/ and the downloads free studio.

I nearly missed this (,thanks to having been such a talk tart recently, this was nearly at the bottom of my Threads I'm On).,

Thanks so much for responding. I will look at that this week. Unfortunately, there's been a lot on this weekend - and still is - so I can't get to it any sooner.

I'll come back to post how I've got on!

Cheers.