Ubiquitous broadband connections mean that most of us no longer have to wait for online videos to slowly buffer before we can start watching them. That said, it is sometimes nice to be able to download videos for later viewing or convert them for a mobile format. AllMyTube is a $29 utility for downloading streaming video off websites like VEVO, Vimeo, and YouTube, which can also convert downloaded videos to many device-specific formats.

Some videos on YouTube are preceded by a short video ad. When trying to download such a video, AllMyTube virtually clicks the link in the ad, opening up a new tab with the target page for the ad. The video does download, but you find yourself staring at a random promotional page. This confused me for the first couple of times, but once I realized what was happening, I simply closed the extra tab and moved on. Fortunately, most YouTube videos don't have such ads.

Once you have the file, you might want to convert it to another video format. AllMyTube provides a rich and simple conversion interface. It offers a long list of devices, so you may be able to just pick your phone or tablet model from the list and convert the video for perfect viewing on that device. You can also specify encoding settings manually. This is essential, because the list cannot possibly contain every device on the market today. For example, while it contains the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, it does not contain the Galaxy S II and Galaxy S III smartphones.

AllMyTube is simple to use, and its interface is relatively clean and free of distractions. It would be even better if it could correctly parse pages with embedded videos and gracefully handle in-video ads, but it is useful all the same.

—Erez Zukerman