The iPad is Apple’s new flagship for Digital Media Content management and playback. However, in its ultimate wisdom, Apple has decided not to support Flash on the iPad and its other Digital Media devices. For now, there is no validated way to get your iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone to stream Flash video, without jailbreaking the device, an action that will void your warranty, and is therefore not advisable. However, there is a way to get YouTube flash video to show properly on your iPad, and this guide will show you how.

The basic idea is to:

1. Watch the YouTube video of choice on your Computer,
2. Save the video on your Computer
3. Convert the video to an iPad compatible (Quicktime) version , and
4. Transfer it to your iPad.

After this, you can enjoy watching your YouTube video on your iPad whenever you like, without even having an Internet connection!

YouTube Downloader is a very simple, effective freeware product, which allows easy downloading of YouTube videos, directly to your computer. The program has a simple, basic interface, only providing two options: Download FLV files from YouTube, and Convert them to most major formats.

1. Download YouTube Downloader from CNET or any other shareware download center. We used download.cnet.com YouTube Downloader, but the program is available on other locations too.
2. Once downloaded, install the program by double-clicking on the program name from Explorer.
3. The program will install in a default location, or at a location you specify.

When you start up YouTube Downloader, the program will show you its interface, with an URL placeholder, and the options to either download, or convert the YouTube file.

1. If there's a YouTube URL in your clipboard, it will automatically paste it for you when you click on the dialog box.
2. If you haven’t selected a YouTube video, do that now by going to YouTube.com, visiting the YouTube video you want to download, and copy the URL from that page to the YouTube Downloader form.
3. Make sure “Download video from YouTube” is selected.
4. Click OK to start downloading the video.
5. It is now time to convert the video to a format compatible with your iPad. Again, click on the Video URL. This will paste the destination location.
6. Click “Ok” to load the video into the conversion program. You can choose between multiple formats, which support iPad, iPhone, iPod, PSP, cell phone, AVI, MP3, WMV, and Xvid.
7. If needed, you can also do some basic video editing using the converter. Functions include cropping of the runtime video, and deleting sound.

You’re almost done. All that remains is getting your video transferred to your iPad. For this, we use your iPad’s best friend, iTunes.

1. Start up iTunes
2. Connect your iPad to your computer. If you are unsure how to connect your iPad to your computer, check out our How to Sync an iPad with Windows guide for more detail.
3. Within seconds, iTunes should recognize your iPad, and start synchronizing.
4. Select File > Preferences
5. Choose the iPad tab, and “Video”.
6. Select the folder where your edited video is stored, and press “Ok” twice (once to start importing, once to confirm the completion of the import).
7. Once you synchronize your iPad again, (check How to sync your iPad with Windows if you don’t know how to synchronize) your YouTube video will be on your iPad, ready to be viewed whenever and how often you want.

If you don’t want to use “YouTube Downloader” to convert your YouTube videos, you can try out “Flash To Video Encoder”. This is a shareware program by GeoVid, which is free to use, and $49.95 for a full version. The program allows encoding of Macromedia Flash movies (which are in .swf format), to the AVI or .mp4 format, supported by the Apple iPad. The program supports many other formats as well, so it might take a little tinkering to get the conversion settings right. However, once the settings are defined, conversion is a breeze

1. First, download the latest version of “Flash to Video Encoder”. We used freedownloadscenter as our source, to download the most current version, which was v5.0.2 at time of writing this guide.
2. Install the program
3. Start the program; This opens the simple conversion interface, with a placeholder for the Flash location, the resulting video location, and the video/audio settings.
4. Locate the downloaded YouTube Flash video by selecting the “…” button right after the “Flash”.
5. Define the Video destination location
6. Set the Video Settings to .mp4, which is supported by your the iPad.
7. Start the conversion by pressing “Start”

Your video will now be converted, and saved to disk.