The Internet is an endless trove of creative content, but the catch is that it’s only available when you’re connected to the Internet. If you know your way around your browser’s advanced settings, you may be able to download a piece of content for offline viewing, but Jaksta Music Miner makes it incredibly easy to grab both audio and video from the web.
The developers make it very clear that their program “isn’t intended for use in circumventing copy protection mechanisms or for making illegal copies of copyrighted content,” and in fact, if media you’re watching is protected by DRM, Jaksta will not touch it. But if it’s not protected, it’s up for grabs.
Watch a video or listen to music online, and Jaksta Music Miner will download the file for you.
Jaksta is incredibly simple to use--just launch it and turn the monitoring switch to On. Then visit a website (like YouTube or Pandora, for instance) with your favorite browser, choose something to watch or listen to, and as soon as the page has loaded, Jaksta grabs a copy of the media--it’ll be fully downloaded before it’s even finished playing on the page.
If the file can’t be played on your Mac, the app automatically converts it to a format that can. Once it’s stored on your Mac, you can use Jaksta to tag it and send it to iTunes. For some reason, you can play audio within Jaksta’s interface, but not videos, although it’s easy to locate the file in the Finder and play it from there. Another issue with videos is that the Send to iTunes command only transfers the video’s audio, as a separate file, so at least the original video file stays intact.
As long as Jaksta is monitoring your browsing, even if you’re using multiple browsers, it keeps downloading whatever you’re listening or watching without you having to do a thing. By default, it ignores anything shorter than 35 seconds, to avoid downloading ads, although you can change that option in the preferences. If the download fails, there’s no way to restart it from Jaksta: you have to reload the page in your browser. Also, you can’t grab “live” content like Skype chats, only prerecorded media.
The bottom line. Video-related quirks aside, Jaksta Music Miner makes saving online content an effortless endeavor.
Jaksta Music Miner 1.0.3
Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Unbelievably easy to use. Downloads both audio and video. Grabs nearly all unprotected media as you browse.
Sending videos to iTunes from the app only transfers the audio. Cannot grab live content.
robertc2012
October 07, 2012 at 6:59pm
Downloaded the demo of MusicMiner. It would not tag anything from Rhapsody. Wrote technical support, they said they are aware of the issue. Until that is fixed it is worthless to me, too bad I liked the PC version.
RC
