Use Your Kindle Fire as a Tying Tool

Before the holidays I was researching gifts for the family. The Kindle Fire intrigued me because of all of its functionality. I bought the Kindle Fire HD right after Thanksgiving and I have been really pleased with it so far. It has been a great eReader for my wife and there are a ton of free games and apps. Many of them are educational and great for kids. One of the main reasons I looked into the Kindle Fire was the option of watching movies over the device. The Fire HD has a 16GB hard drive and can play various movie formats. During the recent Christmas break I was researching tying patterns on YouTube and I kind of wished there was a way to have the movie right there next to the vise. I do have a laptop and I could put that near me but it takes up quite a bit of room. This is where the Kindle Fire HD really came in handy. I found a way to download YouTube movies and copy them to the Kindle Fire. This is great because I can now watch the movies with out being connected to the internet. I figured others out there might find this useful as well. Even if you don't have a Kindle Fire you can still use this info to download movies to your computer. The steps are super easy and there is no special software needed. Everything you require is free on the web.

I'm providing these instructions for the sole purpose of helping with getting tying instructions. I do not condone pirating or stealing content that should be purchased from a vendor. Please make sure the content you are trying to download is not copyrighted.

The first task was finding a way to get a YouTube or Vimeo movie into a format the Kindle could read. MP4 was preferred. I found this website called KeepVid.com. Find a YouTube or Vimeo movie you'd like to download.  For this example I'm using this video.

 

If you click on the video itself and go to the YouTube page the url for the video is at the top.  It is also located under the video on the share tab.  I have highlighted it in the graphic below.

 

Copy the URL then past it in the download field on Keepvid.com. Similar to the image below.

 

Click on the "Download" button. You will be presented with various download links and different formats.

 

The format I downloaded was the MP4 format. Save the file to your computer. It's that easy. After the file is downloaded you can now watch it at any time from your computer whenever you want.

 

To copy the movie to your Kindle Fire HD. With the Kindle on, connect the Kindle Fire to your computer using a USB cable.  Your Kindle should have come with this.  On your PC, open up a explorer view so you can see your drives. An example in the graphic below.

 

If you're running Windows 7 you'll see the Kindle listed under your portable devices. Double click on the Kindle. You'll see the following screens after double clicking it.

 

Double Click Kindle Storage

 

The folders on your Kindle will be listed. Open the Movies folder. Then open the location where you saved the video you downloaded.

 

The last step is to copy the movie from your local computer to the Kindle Movies folder. After it is copied,  disconnect the Kindle from your computer. Navigate to the apps menu. Choose the Personal Videos Icon, you can also download a free app like aVia.

 

I used the Personal Videos app for this tutorial. If you don't see it under the Cloud menu check the Device menu. Inside the app you'll see all of your videos.

 

Choose the video you want. I found this to be perfect for tying step by step next to the vise. The video is crisp and clear on the Kindle Fire HD. It's great to have the ability to pause or rewind the steps while you're tying.

If you want to look something up you can pause the movie and use the Kindle Fire's WiFi to surf the web. It really is a cool little tool.