[General Topics] Menneisyys:
New wmDA version out – now, with built-in full YouTube Flash download capabilities

I’ve frequently posted reviews (last one HERE; if it doesn’t work, try THIS instead) of the ever-evolving of WinMobile Download Accelerator (wmDA) by Adisasta, an application greatly helping in downloading files off the Web.

The latest, just-released version (2.5) of wmDA supports the direct download of YouTube Flash files. (Flash means you’ll only have access to H.263 videos at the resolution 320*240. This also means if you mean higher-quality and/or resolution H.264 videos, you’ll need to use the built-in YouTube access support of CorePlayer, the, currently, only Windows Mobile application to offer direct YouTube H.264 support. Please consult my Multiplatform YouTube bible for more info on all this – and on all the alternative solutions.)

The application is available HERE; the trial version is pretty much usable.

Note: Unlike some other titles (e.g., FlashVideoBundle; see the Multiplatform YouTube bible for more info) it doesn’t integrate into IEM. This means if you liked the easiness of watching / downloading video files of FlashVideoBundle, you may not find wmDA as excellent as the earlier application (and it’s not free either). Nevertheless, if you don’t want to download dozens or hundreds of video files every hour (but only some a week), the (semi-)manual way of address copying won’t cause you much overhead.

That is, you must manually copy the URL of a video to the clipboard and, after switching to wmDA, start downloading.

Using it from Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM)

In Internet Explorer Mobile (IEM), which doesn’t support direct link copying, you can do by going to the Web page of the given video, selecting all in the address bar by, for example, double clicking it, copying it to the clipboard, manually switching to wmDA selecting New and clicking OK. Note that you won’t need to manually paste the URL to anywhere: the contents of the clipboard will automatically be copied to the “URL” field.

If you have any of the current, highly recommended and WM5+ compliant IEM plug-ins (PIEPlus 2.0+, MultiIE 4+ or Spb Pocket Plus 3+), which all offer a way to copy the address of a link, you don’t even need to click the given Web page (and waiting until you can have access to the updated address bar) – just tap-and-hold the link and select the dedicated link context menu item to do the copying. In the following subsections, I explain this all with examples of all the three major IEM plug-ins:

PIEPlus 2+ (see review HERE):

(see Copy Address)

Spb Pocket Plus 4+ (see review HERE):

(look for “Copy Shortcut”; a 3.x screenshot is HERE, showing it also supported link copying)

MultiIE 4+ (review HERE):

(Link Tools / Copy Link Address)

Using it other Web browsers

Of course, you can copy page addresses from not only IEM: this works from all Web browsers that do support any kind of URL copying. Practically, you can do this in all of the current browsers, even in Java-based ones as, except for the vastly outdated TAO, all of the JVM’s support copying from the address input field (which also contains the current address). For example,

-	in Opera Mobile, select “Copy link address” from the link context menu (available starting with 8.65)

-	in NetFront, select “Copy Shortcut” from the context menu:

Note that the official wmDA YouTube video (I’ve also made it accessible on the YouTube itself; should you want to avoid watching WMV videos) shows how this all is done using Opera Mobile 9.5+. Again, it’s pretty similar to how you can copy links from other Web browsers.

Verdict

If you plan to go with a semi-manual way and/or you already have a wmDA license, using wmDA to download YouTube flash files is highly recommended.