Let's face it, sites like Youtube, Vimeo, and others have huge amounts of data we may wish to use for sound files on our microcontrollers. This page will discuss getting a video file from an online video.

Note that some video and audio content online is licensed or copyright protected. The laws vary from country to country. In some countries, like the U.S., using small clips as part of a review process may be acceptable if the whole file is not. Check your local laws on digital rights.

We'll demonstrate obtaining a video from Youtube that Adafruit put up as non-licensed.

Find the video on Youtube. The Adafruit video file is here - you can safely use this Adafruit video to practice without license issues.

First we will use a website called https://en.savefrom.net/ - Adafruit does not endorse this site, we have found it working for this purpose at the time the guide was written.

Copy the web address of the video into the video name box (circled in yellow) then click the blue link circled in red. You do NOT need to download their app.

The page will drop down a bit and allow you to save in several formats. MP4 is fine as long as it does not have the red no speaker icon next to it (as we do want the sound).

The site will then pop up a box asking where you want the video saved. Select a place on your computer hard drive or network storage, video files can be somewhat large.

You should now have a video MP4 file on your computer. You can split the audio from the video for your sound projects by using the Splitting the Audio from the Video guide.

Other Services

There are other websites that allow for getting videos from the web. The video sites tend to try to shut them down. Or, if they become heavily used, they are purchased and have malware on them. I have used http://deturl.com/ with success, staying away from sites that say "warn". You can even save audio off a video and save an extra conversion step. But using 3rd party sites is risky and Adafruit does not endorse any of the sites.