How to download YouTube videos
YouTube has recently added “Download this Video†links so several of its videos, primarily those that are political in nature, which allows you to download the videos onto your computer and watch them later. Long-term the download option is expected to be rolled out onto other videos as well, but for right now it’s pretty limited. So what do you do if you want to download a YouTube video that’s NOT currently available for download? Here’s some ways to get the job done:
The Hard Way:
1. Download the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox (and download Firefox if you don’t have it).
2. Install this Greasemonkey script
3. Click the “Download Flash Video†button that will now show up on YouTube pages
4. Change the file extension of your download from “get_video.php†(this is the default) to a name you can remember .flv (the extention for a flash movie)
5. Convert the Flash file into whatever file type you need
The Easy Way:
A while back I stumbled upon the site Zamzar. Zamzar will download YouTube videos (and covert them into the right file format) for you for free, all you have to do is give the site the URL for the video you want, and tell it what format you’d like to have the video in when it’s all said and done.
1. Copy the YouTube URL of the video you want and paste it into Zamzar
2. Select the format you want (mpeg is usually good for most video editing programs)
3. Enter your email address (Zamzar will email you when it’s done converting)
4. Click “Convertâ€
Depending on how long the video you want it (and possibly how backed up the service is) you’ll receive an email with a link to download your video in anywhere from a minute to an hour. I’ve gotten long videos almost instantly, but had too wait a while for shorter ones- there doesn’t appear to be a rhyme or reason to how long things take. If you’re doing a lot of downloading the company offers some paid subscriptions that give you priority over free users, allow you to do more file conversations at once, and offer storage space (free users have to download videos within 24 hours or they disappear off the Zamzar servers).
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January 28th, 2009
I download several youtube videos a day, and for me, the first is much easier. I use VideoDownloadHelper, an add-on for mozilla, and the converter from mediaconverter.org.
I use media player classic with the k-lite codec, so I don’t need to convert normal videos to watch them. It’s also easy to get songs. I find a song I want, then download the video and convert it to mp3.
January 28th, 2009
Anytime I want to quickly download a youtube file I simply add “Kiss” before “youtube” in the address bar while playing the video.
Works every time.
For all the others it is a combination of Clipnabber and Orbit.