Netbook Network

Online video streaming sites are a hub for unique and interesting videos, requiring only a web browser and Internet access. View, play, and stream – no download is necessary, and videos are played almost instantly and are buffered as you watch. At times when you don’t have Internet access and you want to watch your favorite videos, you might be in trouble – most video sites won’t support downloading their hosted videos, so a third-party tool is necessary. Enter Sothink Web Video Downloader, a desktop application that scans for and captures streaming videos. Unlike many online download services, Sothink Web Video Downloader is claimed to be able to “Download any Videos You Are Viewing on Web” – and today, we’ll find out if it does that.

Interface and Usage

If you’re familiar with uTorrent, you’ll feel fairly close to home with Sothink’s tool. The main window lists your downloads, with various details sorted into the columns, including a download log underneath and a column on the left that allows you to view your currently downloading, converting, finished, and deleted files. With a completed file selected, a playable preview shows up on the lower left corner. Download controls can be found in the context menu or the toolbar at the top of the window.

As far as the interface goes, it’s quite clean and simple, with no learning curve whatsoever. That doesn’t mean it’s without flaws, however – for example, the name of each download is always a garbled mess that you won’t understand unless you rename it manually, and the log underneath your downloads is pretty much useless to the average user. It’s possible to switch the log to a “simple log” which timestamps download starts and finishes, but that too is useless considering all the information you need is shown in the download list.

To actually start downloading videos, WVD has a unique way of finding the original source file – instead of pasting in a URL, it scans supported browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, Maxthon) and “captures” the source file of the video. A little pop-up comes up at the bottom-right of the screen indicating it’s found a video, and clicking on that pop-up will open up the download options.

While it’s not a terribly intrusive system, I’d prefer if it would automatically slide back down if I leave it alone and don’t want to download instead of manually having to close each pop-up. The default jingle played when a video is captured can get annoying, but thankfully you can turn it off.

Having a source detection system instead of having presets for download sites is an effective way to counter site updates and be able to support more video sites. This just by itself isn’t all that good though, and it would be great if the program had specific settings for specific sites – there are some glitches that occur only on one video hosting site and not another. In the image above, WVD is trying to pull a thumbnail from a YouTube video, but it never actually does. The thumbnails work on other video sites, but not YouTube for some reason. Other issues include the inability to select a video quality directly from WVD, and sometimes when I jump to an un-buffered point in a streaming video, WVD pops up again.

A more hidden feature in the software is its built-in video converter that converts videos after you finish downloading them. While I won’t go too much in depth here, it looks like a relatively basic video converter got itself embedded into the WVD. You can select formats, outputs, bitrate, and it even comes with a bunch of presets such as PSP, Zune, iPod, etc. While it’s handy in a pinch, testing it revealed muddy audio quality and a lower video quality as well. I would leave the source file as-is and convert it with a dedicated converter later, as I’m not too confident in the video converter’s abilities – likely why it’s tucked behind most of the other parts of the application. Conversion speed is fairly slow as well, even with the ability to use all cores, and it doesn’t come with Nvidia CUDA support either.

What you might find useful with the converter, though, is its ability to convert to .MP3 or .M4A audio. It’s much more convenient than de-muxing the audio and video files, provided you know what you’re doing and can tweak the audio conversion settings accordingly.

The software also comes with its own FLV player, the most common video streaming format on the web. I suppose it’s handy if you don’t have something like VLC or the proper codecs to play it with, as it’s really nothing but a barebones FLV player.

Performance and Compatability

Now that we’ve gone over the interface, it’s time to test the software out. I pulled up eBizMBA’s Top 15 Most Popular Video Websites to test against, which covers even some more obscure ones like AOL Televsion and LiveLeak. A success is considered to be the software properly identifying and capturing the video (ads don’t count!). Little issues like a re-capture if I jump to a random spot on the navigation bar don’t count against the software, because in the end, the source file is the thing that’s downloaded. For sites that don’t work, I will try another browser to see if it does.

• YouTube – WORKS
• hulu – DOES NOT WORK: Captures the ads, but not the videos.
• DailyMotion – WORKS
• MetaCafe – WORKS
• MegaVideo – WORKS
• MySpace Videos – WORKS
• Yahoo! Video – DOES NOT WORK: Nothing detected.
• Vimeo – WORKS
• Break.com – WORKS
• TV.com – DOES NOT WORK: Captures the ads, but not the videos.
• Veoh – WORKS
• VideoBash – WORKS
• Aol Television – DOES NOT WORK: Captures the ads, but not the videos.
• VEVO – WORKS
• LiveLeak - WORKS

It seems that it’s mostly copyrighted content that doesn’t work, but overall out of the top 15 online video sites, there’s a 73% success rate. Which isn’t bad, but it isn’t terribly good either, considering there are free online services and tools that can properly download the content that doesn’t work with Sothink’s Web Video Downloader.

Conclusion
Sothink Web Video Downloader works nicely with its simple interface and fairly solid video detection and capture rate. By being able to capture videos from a wide variety of online video sites, it streamlines the downloading experience for someone who watches online videos often. If you’re loyal to one video site however, such as YouTube or Vimeo, you may not find Sothink Web Video Downloader any better than free online services and tools due to its set of interface issues and incompatibility with some sites. Those looking to have a solid video converter won’t be thrilled to see the one packed in the software, but it may be enough to satisfy some users.

Pros

• Unique “capture” method of downloading videos
• Clean, easy to use download manager interface
• Comes with a video converter, capable of converting to audio files
• Solid compatibility across most video streaming sites
• Comes with an FLV player

Cons

• Intrusive capture pop-up
• Interface isn’t perfect, sometimes not user-friendly
• Compatibility can be unpredictable with copyrighted content
• Free online tools and software can do the same thing with possibly more compatibility

Sothink Web Video Downloader has earned our Silver Award for excellent software. Congratulations, Sothink Media! You can try out Sothink Web Video Downloader or purchase the software for $19.99 at its homepage. Special thanks to Sothink Media for providing a licensed copy of the software to review.