I have tested several programs that can be used to search for videos on Youtube, download them afterwards and convert them to another format. The portal iDesktop offers all those functions plus the option to play Youtube videos on their website in a very nice interface. Users can perform searches for Youtube videos which are displayed as thumbnails with titles. The size of the thumbnails can be changed on the fly which means that it is possible to fit a lot (55 in my case) of videos on one search result page. The biggest size displays only three per page.
Users can search the complete site or certain categories only. Besides that iDesktop offers access to Featured, Most Popular and Top videos. A click on a thumbnail opens a popup in which the video is played. It is possible to drag and drop additional videos into the playlist. Additional information can be displayed including comments. The player window can be resized and multi-monitor support is available as well.
This alone is fantastic and much faster than known from Youtube. Videos can be downloaded from the website which offers to convert them into another format. Available formats are mov, avi, wmv, mp4, 3gp and 3g2. The conversion takes only a matter of seconds before it finishes.
The only aspect of iDesktop that I did not like was that the icons where not explained when you hovered the mouse over them. It was a little bit of trial and error before I understood each function.
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