Downloading Video and Audio using Downie and Permute

Once you find the right keyword, topic, or channel, YouTube is a rich source of content, and tools for downloading videos are commonplace. In fact, you can’t turn around without running into a YouTube downloader. There are dozens of similar looking and sound apps like YT-Saver, VideoDuke, Wondershare Uniconverter, Wondershare AllMyTube, Allavsoft, Bigasoft, Cisdem Video Converter, VideoPro, not to mention all the browser extensions. There are so many of them they all start to look alike. They’re made by different companies, right?

So, with all these “free” tools, do you need a standalone video downloading app?

If you want one or two videos, then no, but if you’re looking to download a series of tutorials, an entire channel, or extract some audio so you can listen to it offline, then yes you do, and you should look at Downie and Permute combo from Charlie Monroe. Downie handles the downloads and audio extraction for new files, while Permute handles conversion between formats and audio extraction for files you’ve already got.

Downie and Permute are the most powerful and feature rich set of tools I’ve come across. Downie can automatically download from a huge list of sites by parsing the provided link. However, if that fails, you can use the User Guided Extraction function to browse the site inside Downie and have it discover and scan links.

Downie and Permute are also the most affordable at about half of the price of just about every other tool out there.

You can buy Downie and Permute for $27, compared to $50 for Cisdem Video Converter.

Downie might be the right tool for the job, but why download videos, why not just stream them?

The fact we have so much streaming content is amazing, but the content and the connection may not always be there.

– Download 50GB of training materials from home instead of the corporate network

– Assemble a coding playlist and play it from a flash drive

– Watch how to replace a part while you do the job

– Listen to the audio while in the car, exercising, or doing chores

– Extract the audio from an ambient video so you can listen to it at night

– Just when you find the right video, you go back and it’s no longer available. It’s an ugly thing when a person rage quits and deletes all their content.

While there are a lot of tools, they aren’t the same. Getting YouTube content is easy, but software features matter. You should be able to select the quality of the video and audio. Maybe you don’t need the 4K version of a file every single time. Equally, you want the highest quality every time without being asked.

Further, you should be able to download a playlist you’ve discovered, or the entire channel. Plenty of software falls short on all those counts. They grab the highest quality file even though you don’t need it, or can’t parse a channel.

And what if you prefer M4A over MP3 or vice versa?  What if you want MKV over MP4?

Of course, what happens when you move on to other sites besides YouTube? Can the software handle downloading sound effects, or a podcast, or spoken word audio?

How often is the app updated to handle site updates? That was a great thing about Download Shuttle by Fiplab, it worked like a champ, right up until it didn’t. Since it hasn’t been updated in more than a year, it has no idea how to interpret most sites.

So many apps claim they can download from 10k sites, but in reality, if it’s not YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook, they have no idea how to parse the link. They fail to analyze and parse the link and say nothing is available to download.

It’s very rare that Downie can’t handle the link I paste. When that does happen, the User Guided Extraction works 99% of time. For that 1% the site is so riddled with click ads and scraping it’s best to cut and run. That way lies infection.

I picked up Downie 3 in a Bundlehunt sale, and I upgraded to Downie 4 without hesitation. The same will be true of Downie 5 when the time comes.

I’m currently working on a small Halloween project where I’m stringing together Halloween Ambience videos to make a fun loop to run locally on my machine. I don’t need a single video of 3-8 hours, I want a series of clips 15-20 minutes in length to play locally. I want a haunted gothic mansion, then a haunted village, then a stormy night, followed by some glowing pumpkins.

Not only is Downie downloading the videos for me as MP4, but Permute is extracting the audio as MP3 so I can play a mix of Halloween music from my machine.

If you’re looking to download a couple videos from YouTube, pretty much any browser extension will do the job. If you’re looking to grab a channel of tutorials, create a local playlist, extract the audio from some of the fantastic ambience videos out there, then Downie and Permute are the tools for the job.

It can download video is a variety of resolutions, extract audio in multiple formats, and if you’ve already got files downloaded, Permute will help extract the audio or convert between formats.