And so the idea was born to create a screensaver from a Youtube video. I really like the Amiga Longplay series at Youtube, where guys play old Amiga classic games. The videos show all of the game and have a playtime of many hours sometimes. I decided to download several of those videos, namely King of Chicago, Moonstone, Indiana Jones IV and Day of the Tentacle (PC) and create screensavers from them.

I’m using the Firefox Download Helper extension to download the videos from Youtube. You could also use Grab++ from Orbit Downloader or any other means of downloading the videos from Youtube. The videos are still in flv format and we need to use a converter to convert them to swf format.

I have been using a website called Media Convert to convert flv to swf files. It supports files with a size of up to 150 Megabyte.

If you prefer a offline application or have flv files with a size larger than 150 Megabyte you could use Super instead. Super is a media converter supporting most media file formats. It’s also a better idea if your upload speed is rather low.

Once the swf file has been created you can load Instant Storm and the creation of the screensaver from that Youtube video begins. The process is actually pretty straightforward. I have been using the Project Wizard which guides you to three steps.

The steps are to (1) name the screensaver, (2) select the swf file for it, (3) add a preview image if you like and (4) convert the swf file to the screensaver. A .exe file will be created which, when double-clicked, becomes the new screensaver for the system.

What I like about this solution is that you create a screensaver with video and sound. The process is really easy to follow through and you get some very nice results. It’s actually fun watching the screensaver for some time.

This technique is not limited to Youtube videos. You can basically convert any video files to swf files and create a screensaver from them using this method.