Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.05

Ashampoo Clipfinder searches and downloads videos from multiple video portals including YouTube, Sevenload, MySpace, Metacafe, VideoU, MyVideo, and Clip Fish.

Another day, another YouTube downloader. Except this one can download videos from other video portals as well. It is built using a plugin architecture which makes it easy to add more video websites, and the makers promise to to support more video portals going forward. Here are some notes on this program:

• Search all portals simultaneously or choose a particular one that you’re interested in. Displays thumbnails for video search results; other info includes length, "assesment" (a small bar that rates the video for relevance), and name.
• Search results for each portal can be viewed individually in a separate page.
• View videos from within Clipfinder or using an external media player.
• If you have a URL from any of the supported portals you can download by pasting into Clipfinder.
• Flag favorites into your own favorites page. Your favorites be videos that you’ve downloaded or online. You can flag videos that you may have previously downloaded on your hard drive as favorites as well.
• Downloads into FLV format; no conversion to other formats supported.
• You can re-arrange the order of the different portals supported and maximize/minimize
• Skins: 2 available by default. Not holding my breath for many others to be made available for some reason.
• This program is registerware: you have to supply a valid email address in order to receive your free key (and be added to Ashampoo’s newsletter mailing list, or you can use Mailexpire).

This program came out of nowhere to become my number one choice for Youtube/FLV downloading software (with VLC now supporting the FLV format I no longer feel the need for on-the-fly conversion to other formats). It is well designed and implemented and I recommend it.

Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista.

Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 2.16 megs). Also visit the program home page.