The YouTube Conspiracy in Abby/CClive

There is a command line utility available on all Ubuntu derivatives called cclive. If you install it (sudo apt-get install cclive), you can give it a YouTube URL and it will download the video on it. I love using it for backup purposes - I upload a video from the camera, perform all my changes on YouTube, and then cclive the outcome for posterity. Just in case YouTube "forgets" about my latest cam ride.

There is also a GUI for cclive, called Abby. Abby is more than just a frontend for cclive, though, it also helps with pages that have multiple videos on them - playlists or RSS feeds. Abby is hosted on googlecode and written in QT/C++.

I started surfing, so I decided to scour YouTube for surf instruction videos. There is a set of 12 introductory videos by two Australian pros on there, so I decided to download them to take them to the beach. My N900 gladly displays YouTube videos on its gorgeous screen. Unfortunately, though, the T-Mobile coverage is fairly bad, so a downloaded video was the only real option.