YouTube however supports uploading WMV, AVI, MOV, and MPG file formats as well as MPEG4. Using the Sothink SWF to Video converter utility, you can convert your SWF files into an AVI movie and upload it to YouTube.

Sites like YouTube, MySpace and Google Video host millions of video clips that you can either watch online or embed them in your web pages. And then there are “unofficial” tools to help you download YouTube movies to the hard drive.

You know them all so let’s look at a different set of YouTube tools that are incredibly useful and yet very simple.

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Tooble is a free software that lets you watch YouTube videos on your iPod. Such a thing has always been possible but Tooble makes the whole process extremely simple even for novice users.

Tooble will automatically download your favorite videos from YouTube and converts them to MP4 format.

The converted YouTube videos are then imported into iTunes library so the next time you plug-in the iPod, the YouTube videos are automatically transferred from the computer to the iPod.

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It is a sad day for Internet companies in China that run online video sharing websites. In an effort to censor video content, China has imposed a new rule that allows only state owned companies to broadcast online video.

That means if Google is streaming YouTube video via servers located inside China, they may face issues running YouTube inside the “great firewall.”

Google has introduced search suggestion in YouTube similar to what they already have on the main web search engine.

Now when you make a search on YouTube, a list of related search terms and phrases are displayed adjacent to the search results (see screenshot).

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Adobe Media Player, a desktop media player that lets you play Flash Videos (flv), podcasts and QuickTime movies, just got better.

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The market share of YouTube Videos (at 64%) is more than all other online video sharing websites combined. No wonder that YouTube is the preferred destination for uploading video on the Internet as it offers the maximum eyeballs.

While it’s true that videos posted on YouTube can quickly get the much needed exposure but by limiting yourself just to YouTube, you are actually missing an opportunity to expose your videos to the non-YouTube crowd and that is no insignificant number.

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If you love watching videos on the web, World TV is one service that you should bookmark.

Contrary to the name, World TV it is not about watching TV channels online, rather it lets you play your favorite web videos in a proper TV kind of environment.

You also get a full screen video player and can easily flip through videos using the onscreen controls.

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The one big reason why I prefer Blip.tv over YouTube is that the former preserves the quality of the original video. On the other hand, YouTube automatically resizes the video clips (to 320×240) and also reduces the quality during the encoding process.

But here’s some interesting news for content producers as well as YouTube viewers - when a video is upload onto YouTube servers, it is encoded into low-res Flash video but at the same time, YouTube also stores the original video clip in its native resolution.

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Alarm Tube allows you to assign YouTube videos as desktop reminders. And if you don’t turn off the computer at night, you can use this service as a wake up alarm and start the day to the tune of any of your favorite videos.

Alarm Tube accepts natural language commands similar to Google Calendar. So you can say “in 30 minutes” or “tomorrow at 7:30 PM” instead of typing the full date and time.

Then select any YouTube video and that will auto play in the web browser at the configured time. Alarm Tube is available at highimpactnoise.com

It could be a fun way of reminding yourself to exercise and stretch using any of the fitness videos on YouTube.