GetFLV

GetFLV from SuperLogix is a shareware Flash video application that's free to try for 14 days. It's a full-featured tool that can create, convert, and download Flash videos, but unlike freeware tools that only work with a few sites or file types (or just with YouTube) GetFLV can download pretty much any video that can be downloaded, and from any video hosting site, too. It also quickly and easily converts videos to play on your iPhone or other device, and it packs some extras like an Audio Ripper and an FLV Fixer than can repair damaged or corrupted files.

If you've ever used any of the freeware Flash video downloaders, the first thing you're likely to notice about GetFLV is its premium-quality user interface. A sidebar on the left accesses the FLV Utilities, starting with the FLV Browser. This embedded window lets you search securely for videos directly from inside GetFLV's interface without having to install any add-ons or codecs to your main browser. GetFLV can download videos from more than 200,000 sites, so finding suitable material was no problem. We searched for a familiar title and clicked on one of the results. GetFLV not only previewed the video but automatically detected all the matches to a list view that we could sort and edit for batch jobs. Clicking FLV Downloader opened the main downloading tool, which includes Conversion options, including a specific choice for iPad Video. The FLV Converter is also very easy to use, thanks in part to prominently displayed (and easy) instructions. The FLV Maker and FLV Audio Ripper are very similar to the converter, only optimized for creating Flash videos to post online and for extracting and saving audio tracks from video, respectively. We didn't have a bad FLV file to try the FLV Fixer on, but it's nice to know it's there. GetFLV uses a series of pop-up Options dialogs for each function, such as Encoder, Frame Rate, Bit Rate, and more for both audio and video.

GetFLV isn't cheap, but it's a much better performer than most of the competition, as the free trial shows.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Getflv 9.1.1.1.

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