Interesting news.. Just a few days ago I was checking out my sites and which to write about now, and one of them was flvto.com (it was as i remembered it from years back, but now it redirected to flvto.biz). Nice site with quite a big following. And today I decided to write my review, and went to check, and … OMG! Page says domain flvto.biz has expired on June 18 and is pending loss if not re-claimed by the right owner. So, I am not actually sure why in first place do flvto.com redirecting to flvto.biz, maybe hosting kicked them out or seized something, dunno.
But here’s what happens when you get busy with stuff and forget to update your domain name registration. Now flvto.biz – domain with top 3000 sites traffic to its name (according to alexa), maybe up for grabs. I am not a big master of future forecasting, but I promise you, if I can grab that domain, I will be very very happy. But of course this is my first time, and there are many weathered dogs there waiting with their teeth out saliva dripping, anticipating.. Of course it’s a big deal, it’s like 50k to 150k daily visitors. So many people need to download videos from youtube, it’s craaazy! =)
Well, here’s the confirmation, this is the screenshot of godaddy message about flvto.biz soon becoming public domain, pun intended:
how big of a news this is I can’t really say, it’s maybe very big news in a quite small community. I’ve been thinking for a while of either trying myself and making a site like flvto.biz or offliberty.com and see how i can do it. It’s quite easy, to be honest. All you need to do is install ffmpeg, which could be the hardest part, actually.. Cause, it’s in Linux, so… you know.. Lots of dependencies, big compile.. Anyway, then install youtube-dl – one of the best pieces of software for youtube downloads and manipulation and audio extraction for online videos.
adapting youtube-dl for flvto.biz-like website
Now all you need to do is generalize some options you want people to be able to use, like bitrate and stuff, and then all is needed – a little practice with youtube-dl. From that, point first: “youtube-dl -F URL” command will give you the list of available formats to download. Second: “youtube-dl -f FORMAT URL“. and if that didn’t satisfy, there are also bestvideo and bestaudio options, that can help with best quality youtube to mp3 and mp4 conversions.. And that’s it… It’s pretty much all about reading youtube-dl’s output and seeing what it says and telling users this or that.. And letting them pick format or using best* options. And of course have to monitor download by youtube-dl, and either redirect it to the user, or wait for file to be saved by the program and then read that file and pass it to the user. Either way, just a little more work.
And here you go, you have an online service that is as powerful as youtube-dl software (which claims it can do over 1000 sites and their variations, and it’s totally free and updated/supported [in case sites change their streaming rendering youtube-dl’s current setup useless] on hourly basis). Need some CPU room and some HDD space, but at first can survive, later maybe add servers one by one, as needed by traffic.. Oh yeah… Dreams.. One thing i bauble on about this, another – doing it actually, have to hide your name, cause it’s facilitating illegal downloads… Not just telling others how you did it.. Well, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, maybe i can snatch flvto.biz and take all of their traffic! Site is not down, it’s just in trouble.. Time to swoop in! =))) Check flvto site for yourself.
