Adapter (Mac) - FAQs

Adapter uses the FFmpeg project for its conversion backend. FFmpeg uses a limited, outdated color palette that prevents the full 256 colors from being used properly. Animated GIFs will be generated through other means (with better color support) in a future Adapter release.

Upon download completion, Adapter verifies that the downloaded file contains Flash media. The way the Flash container and YouTube's delivery of it is always evolving, so we occasionally have to change our validation to allow for certain media types.

Adapter's backend is largely powered by the command line tool FFmpeg. FFmpeg is an open source media conversion library. To best adhere to the license agreements and avoid confusion of how their software libraries are used, we keep their binary strictly separate from ours, hence the reason it downloads separately.

The other advantage of keeping these libraries from our installer is that when we post an update to our software, you won't have to redownload the extra megabytes of these external libraries that are already on your computer.

You can learn more about FFmpeg from their website FFmpeg.org.

Two-pass encoding is only available for the libx264 encoder with the constant rate option disabled and a specific output video bit rate chosen. This option encodes video more slowly, but often results in a better quality file.

Adapter is free for a limited time.

There are many reasons why a particular source video might not convert to a certain output format, but most often it stems from video or audio bit rate settings. Additionally, you can attempt to turn off allowing stream passthroughs in the preferences to always force Adapter to re-encode all media. Some containers, specifically MKV, don't yet work very well with passthroughs in FFmpeg. This is a known issue for the FFmpeg team that they're working on currently.

First make sure you've got the proper device selected from the Output Format popup button. Then depending on your source file, you may need to sometimes set the output resolution to something like 480x320 and/or limit the video bit rate to something like 768kbs before it'll be able to load on the device.

You can use Adapter to create a ringtone from any video or audio source. Just select the "iPhone Ringtone" setting from the Audio category of the Output Preset popup menu in the toolbar and trim your desired output to a length less than 30 seconds.

In the preview panel, use the export frame button to generate a JPEG in the source video's resolution at the current time.

Yes, right-click in the bottom downloads panel to toggle the option "Automatically Add All Downloads to Queue."

Yes, in the Preferences window, uncheck "Preview video when converting."

The Constant Rate checkbox corresponds to the video encoder's constant rate-factor (CRF) setting, which applies a constant bit rate to the entire output file. The resulting output file is slightly larger, but usually has better quality. Constant Rate mode is disabled when two-pass encoding is selected.

The downloader component was removed due to recent Adobe Flash updates causing the functionality to become increasingly less reliable. You can download the previous version of Adapter from the link below, if you'd prefer. However, the downloader may or may not work for some Flash videos. It seems to work on HD vids but not on the lower resolution ones such as 240p and 320p. You can sometimes force a download by clicking on the gear icon to change the video quality to one that suits your needs.

You can click this link to download Adapter v.1.4.2. Just be sure to not update the software in order to keep the downloader feature. You can choose Skip this Version in any software update windows, and Adapter preferences even has a checkbox to disable auto-check for updates.

Adapter has a built in web browser that automatically allows you to save any flash video file from any site, whether that be youtube, vimeo, hulu or any other site. While adapter makes it possible to download these videos, please abide by the terms and conditions outlined on the webpages you choose to download from.

Perian allows the preview panel to display many additional media formats, allowing you to preview additional content like Flash video and AVIs.

There are several ways to go about doing this, but the easiest is the following:

1. In Adapter, set the output destination to iTunes, then preform your conversions.
2. In iTunes, make sure that either (a) all videos and music files are syncing to your iPhone/iPad or (b) syncing the "Adapter" playlist is enabled audio and video files.

Enabled passthroughs allows for much faster conversions when the 'source' setting is used for all video and audio properties. The video and/or audio streams are simply copied unchanged from the source to the output file.

Add the video file to the source queue and select any of the formats in the Audio category in the output preset toolbar popup button.

Some domains employ HTML5 video delivery, which is not yet supported in Adapter. Additionally, some domains can block applications from grabbing the Flash stream. We're always working to provide access to more and more sites.