Have you ever wanted to keep a video you find on the web and play it on your iPod?

If so, you'll enjoy Cosmopod. This effective little plugin lets you download and convert web videos in seconds. The addon supports all sorts of web formats, including FLV and Divx and can convert them into high quality iPod-ready videos thanks to H.264 and MPEG4 encoding. You can even drag and drop videos from your Mac and convert them with Cosmopod.

The plugin features an embedded player, so you can preview your encoded video and make sure it's what you want and that the quality is OK. Although it's a shame that Cosmopod only works with Safari, the plugin integrates perfectly with the Apple browser, thanks to a cleverly designed interface. You can also activate Growl support to get notified when conversions are finished.

Cosmopod is a little Safari plugin that will allow you to download any encode any web video to an iPod ready format.

Download CosmoPod 2.7 in Softonic

Seatubes is a free application that makes downloading YouTube files easy. Enter the YouTube URL you want to download and Seatubes will download it to your desktop as an FLV file. Seatubes uses the service provided by KissYouTube.com. Install Perian Quicktime Components to view FLV (Flash) files on your Mac.

Download Seatubes 1.1.8 in Softonic

Knowing how to convert video files to Flash is almost necessary nowadays, as Adobe's video format is quickly becoming the dominant one on the net. Working as any other converter, Video2SWF has the advantage of outputting not only to swf but also to flv and html. It supports most of the video and audio formats out there, though we were disappointed to find out that audio mpeg was not handled.

Settings is probably where Video2SWF packs the most features. Not only can you select in and out points for your videos, but you can also add overlay, and a few filters. The program also has a choice of half a dozen different video controls to add to your video. If you work with multiple video files, you'll be glad to know that you can batch convert them.

Performance is where Video2SWF underachieves, with pretty slow conversion speeds. We were also surprised that the application is not yet Universal Binary and still only available to PPC users.

Video2SWF is a flash converter with lots of extra settings but a tad slow in the conversion process.

Download Video2SWF 1.014 in Softonic

If Quicktime is your default media player, then Perian is the tool you need to make sure it plays any media file type you want.

This discreet little component adds support to a wide range of formats including MKV, FLV, DivX and WMA or even less known formats like Xiph Vorbis or Flash ADCPM. It also offers subtitle support for SSA and SRT so you can enjoy films in their original version in Quicktime. Users also like that Perian offers AVI support for H.264 and audio files like MP3 or AAC.

Perian is very easy to install and works automatically once it's set up. While VLC is usually the recommended media player on Mac because of its wide support for all sorts of media file types, having Quicktime with Perian is also an excellent choice to play any sorts of media.

Some users have complained that Perian 1.1 happened to crash with Quicktime 7.4.1 but apart from that Perian performs seamlessly. We encourage you to install to be able to enjoy all sorts of videos on your Mac.

An excellent and free Quicktime component, Perian lets you enjoy almost any media format, including subtitles and a number of audio files. Highly recommended.

Download Perian 1.1 in Softonic

TubeSock grabs YouTube videos from the web and copies them to your video iPod, Mac, or PlayStation Portable. TubeSock knows how to convert the video using the codecs and bitrates best for each device. It can even add the video to iTunes for you.

TubeSock can play back YouTube videos directly. Just copy & paste the YouTube URL, and TubeSock will play the video for you. Click "Save" to save the video to your computer or iPod. TubeSock converts YouTube's native FLV file format into H.264, MP4, or MP3 files.

It automatically determines the appropriate file format, bitrate, and naming convention for the selected target device. Don't have a video iPod? That's OK, we don't either. For luddites like us, TubeSock can grab just the audio portion of a track and add it to iTunes, too. Find your favorite tracks, outtakes, and live recordings on YouTube, then click "Save" to copy them to your iPod. YouTube already uses MP3 for audio, so the conversion is quick and there's no loss of audio fidelity.

TubeSock can install a bookmark script for your favorite web browser. When you browse to a YouTube video you like, simply click the bookmark button. The video will instantly appear in TubeSock.

Don't have an iPod at all? TubeSock can save videos into your Mac's Movies folder, so that they can be played full-screen with FrontRow and your Apple Remote.

Download Tubesock 2.0.3 in Softonic