For those who use the FireFox browser, this software is an ease regarding downloading...
What is it about
DownloadHelper's primary job is to retrieve to your disk the videos
that are playing in Web pages, in their original format.
Unfortunately, the native format (generally FLV) is often not
very convenient when it comes to playing back the videos, on either your home
computer or a hand held device, burning them to a DVD or reworking the movie.
With the new DownloadHelper's Video Conversion feature, you can very easily select
one or more videos that lie on your disk and choose a pre-defined output format. The
program will process the movies in background.
Even better: you can setup the extension to automatically convert the videos
as soon as they are saved by DownloadHelper. You can even specify conversion
rules (which site, which original media format) to be processed with a given
set of parameters.
Video conversion is available on DownloadHelper 3.1 or later.
Easy or powerful ?
Both :)
While you can select an output format by choosing it from a drop-down list,
you can also fine tune the program to deal with dozens of parameters, like the
size of the video, the bitrates to be generated, the number of frames per seconds,
the audio and video codecs to be used and many more, including multi-pass conversions
for an optimal result.
How does it work ?
DownloadHelper doesn't do the conversion by itself: this type of job is not
really suitable for a Mozilla extension. Instead, it relies on the well-known
FFmpeg program to do the conversion task, and provides the necessary glue to
make it simple and convenient for DownloadHelper users.
FFmpeg is the most powerful video conversion utility. In fact, this is the back-end
program used by most video converters on the market.
On Linux and Mac, DownloadHelper accesses directly the FFmpeg version you installed
on your system. On Windows, this is simpler as you install directly an application,
ConvertHelper, to make easier the DownloadHelper/FFmpeg relationship.
Installing the feature
Installing on Windows
Using video conversion with DownloadHelper requires that you turn on the feature from the
extension's preferences dialog.
The simplest way to open the preferences is to right click on the DownloadHelper
icon and select the first entry '
Preferences'. If the icon is not installed
in the toolbar, the preferences can also be opened from the
Tools /
DownloadHelper
/
Preferences menu, or
Tools /
Add-ons menu,
DownloadHelper
selection,
Preferences button. From the preferences window, the tab
Conversion
must be selected.
The
Conversion enabled input must be checked.
The message in red indicates that
ConvertHelper, the external program in charge of
the conversion job, has not been found on the system. Clicking on the
Install/Update converter
button takes the user to a page where a
ConvertHelper installation program can be
downloaded from.
Installing
ConvertHelper is an easy job:
Once
ConvertHelper is installed, click on the
Re-check Converter button or
reopen the preferences.
Video conversion is ready to be used.
Installing on Linux and Mac
For Linux and Mac, we do not have a specific FFMPEG distribution to connect to
DownloadHelper. Instead, the conversion relies on the distribution that has been installed
separately on the computer. Of course, this can lead to conversion failures as the
version of FFMPEG may not have been compiled with the features required by the chosen
conversion parameters. This might be the case, for instance, when converting to MP3
format, as the native FFMPEG may not have this feature for legal reasons.
On Linux Ubuntu, you may install FFMPEG with:
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
Or better,
recompile FFMPEG with
more features.
You can specify the exact location of the FFMPEG executable in the preferences.
Note that you can also use
Mencoder as an alternative to FFMPEG. However,
all the defined conversion parameters will simply be ignored.
Using the feature
Converting manually
Manual conversion allows the user to choose a set of video files from the standard
File open dialog, and to indicate what output format is desired. The program takes
care of doing the conversion job.
Right-click on the DownloadHelper icon and choose
Convert videos. A file chooser
dialog opens.
Several files can be selected by holding the CTRL or SHIFT key while clicking on the
file name.
You can also request a video conversion at the same time you request the download of the video.
For doing this, hold the SHIFT key while clicking on the entry in the download menu.
Then, the user is prompted for the desired output format.
In the basic usage of the conversion feature, the user chooses a pre-defined format in
the drop-down list and click
OK. Conversion will start immediately.
For advanced users, it is possible to tune many parameters of the conversion. Clicking
Details opens a new dialog.
The most common conversion parameters are displayed. To be used, the corresponding
checkbox must be checked, otherwise, the default applies.
Conversion parameters are dispatched within 2 tabs. The
Advanced tab holds
a special
Extra parameters input to be used as FFMPEG arguments when the
corresponding parameter is not listed in the user interface.
If the
2 Passes checkbox is active, the user can specify independantly the
parameters for each pass. By default, the second pass uses the same parameters as the first
one. When using 2 passes conversion, the input file is first processed to gather statistics
on the audio and video streams, then the file is converted in the second pass with optimal
tuning, leading to a better quality and/or a reduced size. This is of course at the price
of a longer execution.
Converting automatically
It is possible to specify that conversion should occur automatically. By default, when the
conversion feature is enabled, the downloaded FLV files are automatically converted to AVI. This
is done using the default conversion rule. This rule can be edited to indicate a different format
or parameters. Selecting the rule from the preferences dialog / conversion tab, and clicking
button
Edit rule opens the rule editor.
If the user needs to convert differently depending on the site he/she is accessing to, or
the format of the original media files, it is possible to create several rules, that will be checked
in order.
Button
Revert to default removes all defined rules and re-create the default one.
Registration
Registration benefits
Registration of the video converter is useful if you are running Windows. It gives the following benefits:
- Converted videos do not longer have the ConvertHelper logo at the top left corner
- You can convert a video to a MP3 file in case you are only interested in the audio
- You have access to our support service
Logo on converted video
The logo appears at the top left corner of the converted videos when you use the conversion on Windows
with an unregistered converter version.
This logo has a fixed size. This means that if you convert a regular-sized web video (e.g 320x240), it
will occupy a small portion of the video. If you use the converter on a small size video (e.g 160x120), it
displays on a substantial part of the image.
You can get rid of the logo by registering your converter version.
Converting to MP3
On Windows, converting downloaded videos to MP3 format is only available on registered versions.
On other systems, Linux or MacOSX, converting to MP3 relies on the capabilities of the
ffmpeg version
that is installed on your system. You may need to recompile
ffmpeg in order to get access to MP3 codec.
Sorry, we don't provide support on this.
How to register
You can register your converter version from our
registration
page. As soon as the operation is complete you receive by mail your personal registration code.
Copy this code to the input field of the dialog that opens when you select
Register conversion
in the DownloadHelper menus (note this menu option only appears if you are running DownloadHelper on Windows
with an unregistered version of the converter and you have enabled conversion in the preferences).
When you reinstall your computer, your Firefox version or create a new user profile, your registration code
will be checked automatically (or you may need to re-enter the code manually) for validity from our servers. After a number
of reinstallations, the registration code will be blocked and you will automatically receive a mail to your
original address. This mail contains a link that you need to visit in order to unblock your license.
Other stuff
Monitoring conversions
Conversions are performed on a one by one basis in order to avoid too much
processing on the computer. Conversion jobs are queued in a list. It is possible to see
the state of the queue by right-clicking on the DownloadHelper icon and selecting
Converter queue.
Known issues
- On Windows, the background converter opens a console. This happens on Firefox 2
and has been solved in the official release of Firefox 3.
See the related
bug for details.
- On Firefox 3, prior to Firefox 3.0rc2, the browser freezes during the time of the conversion. Please, do not
use an Firefox 3.0 beta version. For details, see
Firefox bug #433005.
- Firefox crashes when converting videos while the Converter Queue dialog is open.
[Fixed in 3.1.1]This issue has been reported a couple of times on both Windows and Linux. It might be
a side effect of the fix of Firefox bug
#433055. We are investigating on this. For now, you might want to avoid opening the Converter Queue
dialog while conversions are in progress.
Solving problems
If you play with conversion parameters, chances are that at some point we will have an issue: either no converted
file will be generated, or the generated file won't play on your computer.
For the second case, there 99% chances your system is lacking a non-standard audio or video codec.
You may want to install additional codecs, for instance the
K-Lite Codec Pack.
If no converted file is being generated, it can be:
- a conflict between FFMPEG parameters. There are many cases where 2 parameters just cannot be used together.
- your version of FFMPEG does not support one or more parameters. This can happen particularly on Linux and Mac systems,
as the conversion feature relies on the user-installed FFMPEG distribution.
On Windows only, it is possible to see the conversion log that will certainly give good indications about
the issue.
Open the conversion tab of the preferences dialog and check
Log conversions.
Perform a conversion, then come back and click
Show log
Import/Export conversion formats
As fine-tuning conversion might be a tricky job, you may find convenient to be able to save and retrieve
conversion configuration data. For doing so, right click on the
Video Output Format window (not on a
widget but on the window background). This opens a context menu with the option
Copy video format.
If you choose this option, the current configuration data are stored as a text string into the clipboard.
You can paste it to a text file for later retrieval.
Similarly, if the clipboard contains a text string that can be understood by DownloadHelper, you will see
a second menu entry,
Paste video format, that will update the current format from the clipboard data.
Prevent conversion
- If you don't want to use conversion at all, the best way is to disable the feature from the extension
preferences.
- If you want to convert only on demand without automatic conversion, you should enable the conversion from the
extension preferences but remove any conversion rule. You will still be able to use manual conversion from
Convert videos menu or SHIFT-click on the download menu entries.
- If you want automatic conversion in general but not for a particular video, SHIFT-click on the entry in the
download menu, then choose Cancel in the Output format dialog. You will then download the file
in its original format.
Source code
You can download ConvertHelper source code from
this link.
To be compliant with FFmpeg rules, we also provide
the sources we used to build the converter package. However,
if you plan to recompile FFmpeg you should better download the latest code by following the procedure described
there.
