Optical discs, remember them? Now they seem almost as antiquated as 8-tracks. (Google if you don’t know what they were. I believe that The Flintstones used to use them. Google them, too.)

Streaming video is king. Other than subscription services and sites such as You Tube, Vimeo, social media has most likely become part of your daily  life.

Now suppose there’s a specific video that you want to watch. Of course, you can access these sites via WiFi on your desktop. But supposed you have to go somewhere via pubic transport or you’re in a vehicle. If you have a data cap, you’re going to chew through that quickly. And then there’s roaming charges.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple way to download your chosen videos or audio to your desktop, which you could then transfer to a mobile device?

Video Duke is a new advanced video downloader for macOS. It can save videos from such file hosting services like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc. and even from social networks like Twitter and Facebook. You can easily choose the preferred video format and resolution before downloading. VideoDuke also allows to extract .mp3 from any YouTube video and download streaming videos.

PRO: Downloading is easy for video. The simplest way is to click on, say, You Tube on the home page and put the URL of your chosen file in the URL field. Now look at the bottom of the page and you should see your options. Make your selection, click on “Download”, and Video Duke will commence downloading.

When completed, the button will change to “Show In Finder.” One click and can view your downloaded contents in a Finder pane.

Downloaded video is played on Quicktime X. I have to say that my video downloads looked stellar on my 4K iMac.

CONS: The other option that you have is downloading the audio only (you also have the option of downloading Flash files). As a musician, I’m enamored with the isolated vocal and musical tacks that have begun springing up on You Tube.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get that function to work. More disappointing, according to their literature, the audio is downloaded in .mp3. You can call me snobbish but I like uncompressed audio, particularly if I want to listen to my file through my audiophile software. It would be nice if you had several formats to choose from.

I struggled with many of Video Duke’s functions as the app is not intuitive and their support is somewhat weak. When you click on help for answer, you’re whisked off to their support page. Most of the answers I found were not very useful.

What I think would be a much better idea is to create a .pdf illustrated manual that would open on the screen that you have Video Duke open on allowing for split screen. As I’m a fan of Full Screen, every time I clicked for help, I would change screens. This version of Pong took up most of my time while using the app. Not a pleasant experience.

SUMMARY: If you’re looking to to have all of your downloaded You Tube, Vimeo, et al. files located in one convenient place, this app is a godsend. 

To be fair, Video Duke is just learning to walk. It’s at version 1. I can see this as indispensable for easily capturing my desired video and audio then transferring it to a mobile device for watching while out and about. But I feel that it has some kinks to work out. None of them technical, just logistical.

Video Duke requires mac OS 10.10 or later. Video Duke is USD $19.95 for a Personal License and USD $39.99 for a Family Pack for three computers. Plus there are additional support offers. There’s a free trial version that will permit two video downloads for you to kick the tires.

If you’re interested in Video Duke, for a limited time, Video Duke is 50% off if you use the discount code: VDDSC-50-ST

Give it a bash and see what you think.

Test Rig: Late 2015 4K 21” iMac, OS X 10.4.2, 16GB RAM, 1 TB Fusion Drive

©2018 Frank Petrie

about.me/fpetrie