Q: Is there a way to download YouTube videos to the iPod classic? Can I also download just the audio of a YouTube video to use on a second-generation iPod nano?
– Bill
A: While the Apple TV, iPhone and iPod touch provide a way to view YouTube videos if you have an Internet connection, this feature is not available on the iPod classic or iPod nano. Further, even for those devices that do provide YouTube browsing, you must be connected to the Internet to view YouTube videos, as they are streamed from YouTube’s servers, rather than transferred directly onto your device.
iTunes itself does not provide a means for accessing YouTube or converting YouTube videos into a downloaded format that can be transferred or stored in your iTunes library or on your iPod.
Fortunately, as with most oft-requested features, third-party software tools are available to fill the gap.
For Mac users, TubeTV (http://www.chimoosoft.com/products/tubetv) is a great free option which will allow you to browse YouTube videos, and download and convert them directly into an iPod-ready format, and can even add these videos to your iTunes library, tagged as Movies, Music Videos, or TV Shows and add it to a custom playlist.
For Windows users, Videora (http://www.videora.com) is one of the more popular iPod video conversion tools, and recent versions have also added support for the conversion of online videos from sites such as YouTube.
Conversion works otherwise in much the same way as it does for other types of videos within Videora, and the final result is an iPod-ready video in your iTunes library.
Another option, TubeSock (http://stinkbot.com/Tubesock, $15) is available for both Mac and Windows users, and provides the additional ability to convert only the audio portion of a YouTube video track for use on an iPod model that doesn’t support video playback, such as the second-generation iPod nano. Another nice feature of TubeSock is that it will integrate a bookkmarklet into your existing web browser so that you can launch it directly from a YouTube page.
