By Nick Peers
The web is chock-a-block with video: YouTube, streaming video, downloadable movies -- the list is endless. Unfortunately, most of it is tied to the Internet: you have to be online to access it and watch it through your web browser, which isn't always the most convenient way of doing things.
Grappler promises to change all that for Mac users. This shareware tool is unbelievably simple to use: once installed, you have two choices: if you know the URL, enter it to visit the web site directly, then click on the video -- Grappler will detect it and start downloading. If you don't have a web site in mind, enter your search terms to reveal a list of possible matches, then scroll through the results that Grappler finds on the web. You can view a video direct from within Grappler, visit the parent website it's taken from and -- most importantly -- download it to your Mac for viewing offline.
Videos selected for download appear in the clip tray at the bottom of the main Grappler window: once downloaded, they're automatically converted and added to your iTunes library, which has the added benefit of allowing you to port them across to your portable device for viewing away from your Mac.
Found a video but only want the audio track? No problem: flick the switch above the clip tray and Grappler will download the audio stream on its own and send that to your iTunes library instead. It's all unbelievably simple to use, and anyone with a penchant for downloading web-hosted video to their computer will find it irresistible.
The downside is that it's not yet capable of working with all Internet-hosted video, but it works with YouTube, Vimeo and many other popular sites, and we trust the developers will widen compatibility as the app develops further.
Grappler is shareware, which means it'll download up to 10 videos before requiring you register for the full program. The asking price, $19.95, isn't prohibitive, and Grappler will run on Mac OS X. It's not made clear which flavours of Mac OS X it'll work with, but we tested it with OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) with no problems.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
