Posts Tagged: youtube

Let’s Talk About Replay Media Catcher and HTTPS

Posted | Category: Applian News, Applian Software, Replay Media Catcher, Replay Music.

Replay Media Catcher HTTPS/SSL Scanning

Keeping up with the constant changes in streaming protocols is just the job for Replay Media Catcher‘s Engineers. They like a challenge and frequently whip up very smart solutions to very tough problems. If you’ve installed the most recent version of Replay Media Catcher, you’ll see that we’ve made some great improvements. And if you like to download streams from YouTube, then you’ve likely seen the new prompt to install a CA certificate. So what’s that all about? Have no fear! We’re here to break it down for you. Let’s get nerdy, shall we?

YouTube and some other sites now stream their media over an HTTPS connection by default. So what is HTTPS? Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure is the secure version of http. Typically used when a secure connection is necessary. Like for ecommerce transactions and such. When you connect to a website that is using HTTPS, the session is encrypted with a Digital Certificate.

Let’s first look at how Replay Media Catcher downloads, then we’ll explain how installing the CA Certificate helps it to do it’s job better.  When you switch on Replay Media Catcher, it starts sniffing the network traffic. Looking for media to download. As you come across streaming video or music, Replay Media Catcher decodes that network traffic and if it understands what it is seeing on the network, it tries to detect and download the media based on intelligence we’ve written for that protocol. Pretty slick, right? That’s how Replay Media Catcher can download so much more without browser plugins. It simply does not need them. It only listens to the network.

Let’s say you’ve switched on Replay Media Catcher’s monitoring and you’re happily browsing along and decide to download the latest viral video on YouTube. Remember we said that YouTube is now streaming their media over an HTTPS connection.. SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. When you see HTTPS in the URL, you are using the SSL/TLS protocol to speak to that website. Replay Media Catcher will then not understand that traffic and disregard it.  That sounds like bad news, right? Nope! Read on…

If you’re running Replay Media Catcher version 5.0.1.46 or later, you’ll notice a new prompt when it first sees media from a site that is streaming over HTTPS. This prompt explains that in order for Replay Media Catcher to scan for media that is streamed over HTTPS, a CA certificate is required to be created. A CA (Certificate Authority) is an authority in a network that issues and manages security credentials.

You can choose to allow HTTPS scanning or not. If you choose no, Replay Media Catcher will ignore any HTTPS streaming and you’ll be sad. That breaks my heart. Say YES!

Replay Media Catcher HTTPS

If you choose YES, (and we recommend you do) then Windows will prompt you to install the CA certificate.  Windows presents you with this:

Windows Security Warning

The title of the window says “Security Warning”. Yeah, well…it’s not a problem. Windows is just letting you know that a certificate is about to be installed. Windows says that it cannot validate the certificate as actually being from Replay Media Catcher, but have no fear. We have created a certificate called Replay Media Catcher 5 SSL Scanner Root. Essentially, it allows Replay Media Catcher to scan HTTPS traffic like that being served by YouTube for downloadable media. It is absolutely safe. And you are not putting yourself or your computer in any danger by installing it.

Don’t miss out on all the great streaming goodness that Replay Media Catcher can download. It’s waaay smarter than any other streaming media downloader. Guaranteed!

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions!

Dr. Wilson’s Possibly humorous Distraction – Vol. 3

Posted | Category: Replay Media Catcher, Uncategorized.

Dr. Wilson's Possibly humorous Distraction

Today, we are doing SCIENCE! Did a parent ever warn you not to stick a soda in the freezer? Sure, that may have been a rhetorical question, but what about sticking a can of soda in liquid nitrogen? NurdRage on YouTube does all kinds of science experiments … and you should probably let him do them instead of trying yourself.

Oh, and if you are having trouble downloading YouTube videos with Replay Media Catcher 5, make sure that secure http (https) is not being used. See here for more information.

Dr. Wilson’s Possibly humorous Distraction – Vol 1

Posted | Category: Uncategorized.

Dr. Wilson's Possibly humorous Distraction

Our superstar UX lead here at Applian, Dr. Jeffrey Wilson, PhD, spends a lot of time analyzing debug logs from customers. He likes to give customers a quick 2 minute video to test record so that he can keep the logs small. So he frequently searches out these short video clips which end up playing a vital role in the data logging procedure. Needless to say, he sees quite a few videos (and other types of media), so now we’ve given him an opportunity twice a month to share in his…. umm… work habits.

To get the ball rolling, here is his first video suggestion. Movies, especially science fiction movies, tend to have plenty of logical inconsistencies. The YouTube channel, How It Should Have Ended, gives their take on alternate endings for MANY movies. So, without further ado, sit back and enjoy a new look at a classic.

We hope you enjoyed this first installment of Dr. Wilson’s Possibly humorous Distraction. See what we did there with the title? Dr. Wilson PhD. Get it?

YouTube MP3 Fridays

Posted | Category: Applian Software, Music, Replay Media Catcher.

For the last couple of Fridays, YouTube has changed how they are delivering videos, which has broken our downloading software (as well as all of our competitors). In particular, the Vevo branded music videos seem to be the ones that get the new technology first. Nevertheless, we are on top of it, and have managed to get new releases ready within a day or two of the changes. The bad news is that our engineering team is starting to loathe the end of the week.

The latest format is called MPEG-DASH — according to our alpha geek. We are having to do a little extra work to turn this format into a playable file, but the end result is as good as ever.

If you’re an avid YouTube downloader, you might consider trying Replay Video Capture for Video, and Replay Music for Music if you don’t want any downtime. Both of these products take an “analog” approach to recording, and will record video and music in high quality no matter what YouTube does behind the scenes.

Replay Media Catcher is still the fastest way to download from most video and music sites, and it makes a perfect digital copy of the original file. So no matter what changes happen in the future, we’ve got you covered!

Five Great Sites for Streaming Music

Posted | Category: Music, Replay Music.

Every other month or so I put together a list of sites that are great for streaming audio or video and publish the list in our newsletter. Here are five sites that were featured in the March newsletter:

I like having 1.FM on while I am at work. I am a total fan of the 70’s pop station. The songs crack me up.

1.FM

Band of the Day is an adventure – you never know what kind of music you’re going to hear. And if you miss a day – no big deal – they recap the bands they’ve chosen from earlier days at the bottom of the home page.

Band of the Day

I confess I haven’t set up my own station with earbits – instead I like the editors’ picks – always a good listen.

Earbits

8 tracks is my absolute favorite for discovering new music and new bands!

8 Tracks

Thanks to Mixcloud I now have a few DJ favorites that I like to listen to and follow. Always great for livening up my afternoon at work.

mixcloud

And of course all these sites work fabulously with Replay Music. 🙂
What are some of your favorite sites for discovering new music?

Play the Search Suggestion Game

Posted | Category: Miscellaneous.

I’m at a SEO conference today, and one of the best presentations was by a group of Google employees on some of the moral and ethical challenges of running a search engine. Matt Cutts – the Google official SEO blogger – was on the panel, as well as a couple of other people.

I was amazed at how a lot of issues come up with how to handle certain Google search results. Some of the panel’s examples were interesting. Should a suicide note left on a web site come up when searching for the victim’s name? Should a white supremacist hate site about Martin Luther King come up in the search results for MLK? Should posts warning about the dangers of vaccinations come up when searching about the safety of vaccines appear – in spite of sound scientific evidence against and the fact that misinformation could cost lives? And in some cases, Google execs in foreign lands have been arrested for videos appearing on YouTube – what does Google do about that? I had no idea.

Another fun aspect of this debate was the search suggestions that Google provides. These mirror what people are actually entering, and aren’t censored or edited at all – in spite of the fact they can be offensive to some. Try entering “asians are b” or “americans are f” and see what Google expects you to type next. It’s both funny and horrifying.

At our family dinner table, I shared this with the kids, and we tried the Search Suggestion game on their names. We tried “Bryce is” and “Laurel is”, and got some hilarious results – both complementary and insulting. Try this with your own kids names for fun!

Installing Replay Media Catcher on Windows 8

Posted | Category: Applian Software, Replay Media Catcher.

Replay Media Catcher in Windows 8

YouTube video: Downloading, Installing and Using Replay Media Catcher in Windows 8I just created a short video showing how to install and use Replay Media Catcher on Windows 8.

As long as you are in desktop mode in Windows 8, your experience using Replay Media Catcher will be no different than in earlier versions of Windows. Watch the video and see.

There is one slightly new thing that may occur during your download of Replay Media Catcher – you may be asked to install .NET Framework. Windows offered to help me find the program – and then did find it and install it on my PC. Once it was installed, I saw this screen and Replay Media Catcher finished downloading.

.Net Framwork Dialogue Window

Have you tried Replay Media Catcher with Windows 8 yet? How’d it go?

Convert YouTube Videos to iPod, iPad, DVD, etc. – now just $9.95

Posted | Category: Applian Software, Replay Converter.

After reading a lot of commentary, and doing some testing, we’ve decided to lower the price of Replay Converter to just $9.95 last week. A lot of people are downloading videos to copy to other devices or DVD’s, or to prepare them to make mashups, and Replay Converter does a great job at this.

We decided that as a company it’s best to encourage more people to use our products, even if it means making a little less money. So if you’re looking for an easy to convert FLV files, or other things downloaded from the web, give Replay Converter a try.

New Applian Media Browser Toolbar

Posted | Category: Applian Software, Product Updates.

Today we have just released a cool gadget – the Free Applian Media Browser Toolbar. From within Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can stay notified when Applian product news and updates occur, quickly get access to tutorials and help with streaming media recording problems, as well as some handy gadgets including a search box, radio player, weather bug, email notifier and more.

The Applian Media Toolbar is free. Check it out here: http://applian.com/toolbar/

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