Update 6/28/08: If you have installed Videoraptor 3.0, then you’ll have to roll back to 2.1 in order for the free license key to work.  A reader of mine has given me a link to a forum post that has the fix for this problem.  Please take a look here.

Update 6/22/08: I was just notified by one of my visitors that Videoraptor has been upgraded to version 3.0.  Evidently the keys that I have to give away will only work with 2.0.  If you still want one, just send me an email.

I have been given 500 license keys for Videoraptor to give away.  It’s free for anyone.  Send me an email using the contact form.

I was contacted recently by RapidSolution Software AG to do a review on their commercial software, Videoraptor. I decided to take a look at it and give my opinion on the features of this software. Scroll down to read the review.

Trying to find music and videos on the internet can be a hassle, especially now since there are many sites available for you to search for both music and videos. Even when you find the song/video that you are looking for, you are not always given the option to download it. Videoraptor solves this problem by allowing you to search many sites simultaneously, and gives you the option to download the music and videos. Many other features are also included, which will be discussed below.

Features

When you first start up Videoraptor you are taken to the Music Search tab, which allows you to search for an artist, song, etc. It will search for videos and mp3s through various websites and will give you the option to download those songs and videos. Once you search for something, it will sort the results by artist and title. It will automatically assume you searched for a specific artist, so say you searched for the artist Pillar, it would then automatically select Pillar in the Artist list. If you instead search for a song you will have to select the right artist from the list. For example, say you search for Frontline, you will then have to select Pillar from the artist list after your search. You can also choose whether you want to search for videos, mp3s, or both.

When you download videos and songs, you have the option to choose from various conversion methods. For videos you have 3GP, AVI, MP4, WMV7, and WMV9. For converting videos to audio and downloading songs you have M4A, MP3, Ogg, WAV, WMA, and WMApro.

There is also the option to search for videos based on the initial letter. This way you can browse for videos without actually typing in the name.

Surf & Catch is one of my favorite features of Videoraptor. This options enables you to listen to music or watch videos on popular websites and it will automatically catch and download them to your library. Right now this feature only works with Internet Explorer. While that may be a disappointment for some, it is still a nice feature nonetheless. Right now it will monitor these websites: Last.fm, Pandora, Soundclick, ClipFish, DailyMotion, GodTube, GoogleVideo, MetaCafe, MySpace, MyVideo, OnlineGlotze.tv, ROFL, RTL, YouTube, and various adult sites which I will not mention here. You can enable or disable automatic downloading for songs, and for videos you can choose whether to automatically or manually download them.

Other options include burning to a CD and creating a ringtone. You can also transfer music to a mobile device like an MP3 player.

Some Thoughts

Videoraptor is very useful for finding and downloading music and videos on the web, but there are a few things that it could improve on. I think maybe the option of adding your own music and video sites for it to search would be nice. I would like to see it have the option to search Imeem since Imeem has a lot of music available. Also, I’d definitely like to see the Surf & Catch option available on Firefox. It really isn’t too much of a problem to open up IE to use it, but it would be nice to have it working on Firefox.

Synchronizing with a mobile device is a nice option, but it didn’t work with my Dell DJ. Maybe that’s just because my Dell DJ is getting old now, but it would be nice if it would work. I’m sure it works for newer devices and iPods.

Videoraptor basically does what you can already do on the internet, but it combines it all into one and makes it really easy to use. At first I was wondering if I would like this software, but after using it for a while I found out that it is really useful. As I said before, the Surf & Catch option is my favorite feature, and it is that option that makes this software worth using in my opinion.

One last thought is that the conversion options are a plus. Being able to download music and videos and convert them to an appropriate format from within Videoraptor saves time so that you don’t have to convert them later yourself. I think it’s very nice that you have the option to choose if you want your videos to be converted to only audio. That way, if you find a music video on youtube, you can then convert it to an mp3 so you can listen to it without the video.

Conclusion

I’ve been trying to come to the conclusion whether Videoraptor is worth the money to buy it. Because of all of the features included in the software, it is in my opinion worth the money. Yes, there are ways to do what it is doing for free, but the convenience of having it all bundled into one package is very nice. I hope to see improvements on this software in the future such as adding more sites to the search list, and Firefox compatibility. Other than that, I’m going to say that you should give Videoraptor a try if you are constantly finding yourself searching for music online.

Videoraptor