socialrosiechen: dirpy Studio is a slick way to turn YouTube clips into MP3 downloads

Monday, August 23, 2010

dirpy Studio is a slick way to turn YouTube clips into MP3 downloads

Got a favorite webcaster on YouTube? A favorite music video, perhaps? Wish you could save the audio as an MP3? You can, of course -- there are plenty of websites and downloader apps which let you do it. Dirpy Studio is a more recent addition you may not have heard of, and it's certainly worth knowing about.

Search for a video on dirpy.com, and the results are displayed in a list. Pick your desired clip (ahoy, Alestorm!) and dirpy Studio opens the interface you see above. Rather than just giving you a file immediately, dirpy allows you to customize the file name and ID3 tag data. You can also clip a specific portion of the audio if you wish -- great for lengthy conference videos -- and video download links are also provided.

Dirpy also offers a bookmarklet, putting Studio within one-click reach while you're browsing YouTube itself.

There's still one big downside, of course: a lot of the audio on YouTube isn't of the best quality. If you're after high-quality audio, no YouTube-to-MP3 app is going to meet your standards. Dirpy's good enough to earn a spot in my bookmarks, however.