I am a: Quirky sysadmin. Geek. Gamer. Comic fangirl. My little space, my home on the interwebs. I blog about personal stuffs, work, various coding projects, and anything else I feel like.

Notes:

• Your PC’s configuration will differ from mine, so you may need to alter the process. I’m posting what worked for me and hopefully it will work for you!
• I have only tried this with YouTube so far, but hope to try out on other popular online video formats. Please feel free to comment below with your findings, thoughts, etc. — Please don’t ask me if I know if this will work with www.whatever.com … I don’t know. ;P — Rest assured that I will try to come back and post any and all findings. Take from that what you will. ;P
• Please note that this is NOT a tutorial on video rings!

Credits:

• Special thanks goes to: Thox, Anthonyrn, and the countless others at the Heliocity forums who’ve posted helpful information for the Helio Ocean (and countless other topics!)
• Link Love: The FAQ that started it all — if you know nothing, start here!

Tools you will need:

• Software: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Pantech Sync Software for Helio Ocean (if not already installed)
• Hardware: Helio Ocean, Helio USB cable
• Website: Convert Direct

Getting started:

The first thing you’re going to need is the URL to your video. I chose YouTube because they use FLV (Flash Video) format and there are many sites which can convert that to various other media formats for free. I’ve tried several sites which didn’t work out for one reason or another: would not play on the Ocean, the video playback was slow or crappy, or a combination of other reasons. Convert Direct happened to be the first one which worked quickly AND the video playback was smooth AND is free AND (for the most part) has a decent online/uptime percentage. (be aware: that may change in the future!)

So, here is an example video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ewGk7aKjk7k — Copy the link, you’ll need that for the next step.

Go to http://www.convertdirect.com/ in Internet Explorer. For some reason, I couldn’t perform this process in Firefox (maybe a plugin incompatibility or an anti-Firefox site?). I haven’t had time to look into this, nor do I have an IE tab plugin installed at this time. It’s easier for me with two browsers open anyways so I can switch between them.

Under “Convert online flv youtube to 3gp/mp3/avi/wmv/mp4/mov directly” enter the YouTube link. Next to “Converts to:”, select 3gp (mpeg4+aac). Click the Convert button. Depending on the size of the video, this could take a few seconds to a few minutes — the longer the video, the longer it takes. When it’s done, you’ll see the Convert button grey out and a large yellow link show up below that says “Click the link to download the converted video“. The URL will look something like this: http://www.convertdirect.com/13826162151.3gp_1

Note:

For whatever reason, this link is an incorrect link. I don’t know if this is on purpose or even if the site owner is aware of it.

At this point, I copy the link and paste into Firefox. (Otherwise IE will open it and refuse to let you save it, or rather I couldn’t.) Trim off the “_1” part following the 3gp extension and save somewhere on your pc. Once the file is done saving/downloading. Transfer to your Helio Ocean using the USB cable. Save to your external memory in the Helio Video folder.

In closing:

I hope you’ve found this helpful. I appreciate constructive feedback and comments. Any requests for videos, movies, video rings, etc. will be REMOVED and the poster’s IP banned from this domain. (there, you’ve been warned)

If a step is not clear enough or if something is confusing, please feel free to ask for clarification in the comments form below!

Thanks! :cool: