I have clients that sometimes need me to copy a video (typically theirs) from a site like YouTube and convert it so I either burn a DVD or get it to play from their laptop. I do not recommend playing it from YouTube for you never know what the connection will be like when they need to play it.

Any recommendations? I tried Snagit and you can not change the quality, plus the MP4 file it creates, Vegas Pro (11 and 12) can not read the video portion.

Thanks for your help, James

There are youtube downloaders. Sorry, I don't have a recommendation for one.

Snagit is a Techsmith product, yes? Have you downloaded the Techsmith Player? It includes their TSSC codec, which I've used in Vegas quite a bit for editing Camtasia screen captures. It might work for Snagit too. Just download and install from Techsmith, restart the PC, and see if Vegas starts showing you the Snagit captures.

Thanks Seth, I will try that. James

James, I use a free piece of software called Free Studio 5 for capturing YouTube footage and it works great.
I save the files in HD MP4 format and drop them right on the Vegas timeline with no problems.
Free software: video converter, ipod converter, mp4 converter (http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm)

There's a addon for firefox called Unplug for downloading videos. I had to use it once to get my original uploaded videos from my videopress account (which I was not able to find an option for) and unplug did the trick.

I researched this a few weeks ago and found that savevid worked well:

Download Online Videos Save Direct Easily - Savevid.com (http://www.savevid.com/)

I was able to edit the footage in Vegas no problem.

Pete

Just happened to come across this app, which seems to have a few useful features:

How to Download YouTube Videos | PCWorld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/244289/how_to_download_youtube_videos.html)

Note the interesting disclaimer at the bottom of the article.

I normally go about this a bit differently....
Browse to youtube video, copy the URL
Browse to keepvid.com, paste the link
Choose your quality level (always the biggest mp4)
If I need to convert to DVD or edit in any way, I convert it to Cineform first (Prores if i'm on Mac),
Do any editing, resizing, levels adjustments (you may find its 0-255 having come from the net, if going to DVD you will want to bring it back to 16-235).
And if you have time, Neat video can smooth out some of the compression artifacts.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will look into those softwares. The snagit was not for me. It had one setting for the quality of the video which was pretty poor. Program was easy to use. Thanks again! James