Even YouTube’s most enthusiastic fans (like Michael Wesch, whose Anthropology of YouTube video we mentioned recently) tend to overlook one very disappointing fact — you can’t easily save videos to your hard drive.Luckily it turns out that, while YouTube certainly doesn’t make it easy, it is in fact possible to download and save videos for offline viewing. In fact, there’s a whole cottage industry of developers building tools that allow you to download YouTube videos.
Lifehacker points us to YouTube File Hack, which can be used as either a standalone application or from Internet Explorer via a menu item that offers to download YouTube videos. I took it for a spin this morning and it does indeed work. Now I have my very own copy of skateboarding dog lovingly preserved for all eternity.
While YouTube File Hack is the easiest tool I’ve tested for IE users, it isn’t the only means of grabbing a YouTube movie.Safari users have it easy, just open up Activity Monitor and double click the actual video file. Safari will happily download an FLV for you. Firefox users can check out Lifehacker’s Better YouTube extension which uses Greasemonkey script to insert a “download this video” link next to every YouTube movie.
There are several other Firefox plugin out there, as well as a few other standalone apps. If you have a favorite method be sure to let us know.
Result for: offline copy
Download YouTube videos - The videos from online viral video hosting and sharing sites such as YouTube and Google Video are not downloadable.
The video will be streaming directly to the embedded player on the web page, without any downloadable link to save the video locally for offline viewing or for transferring/synchronizing to portable media player.
Javimoya’s Video Downloader
Javimoya’s Video Downloader helps you to download online videos directly to your computer, right from the web page itself, without any installation, and works in all operating system and computer. What Video Downloader does is, it extracts the hidden links to the media files that embedded in the HTML code, and displays the downloadable links for you to download YouTube videos.
All you need to do is just select the video site’s tab, input the URL of the video (appears on the address bar of the web page where video will play on it) which you want to download into the text box, and then just follow the download instructions.
Video Downloader supports a lot of video hosting sites, including major video sharing sites such as YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, IFILM and Dailymotion, plus (some still in working) Angry Alien, ArtistDirect, Blastro, Blennus, Blip.tv, Bofunk, Bolt, Break.com, Castpost, DevilDucky, FindVideos, Free Video Blog, Grinvi, Grouper, LuluTV, Midis.biz, Music.com, MusicVideoCodes.info, MySpace Video Code, PcPlanets, Pixparty, Putfile, REVVER, Sharkle, StreetFire, That Video Site, The One Network, VideoCodes4U, VideoCodesWorld, VideoCodeZone, vidiLife, VIDNET.com, Vimeo, vSocial, Web62.com and ZippyVideos.
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Result for: offline copy
Make an offline copy of a YouTube video.As part of my gathering and thinking I decided to store a copy of the interesting YouTube videos on my own Mac. After some searching I discovered this particularly useful technique:
I’m preparing to present a keynote at a conference in April. Right now I’m just gathering ideas and resources, but there are several YouTube videos I may be interested in showing.
you can get the FLV that is being played without additional software, by playing a video in Safari with the Activity window open. You should see one entry that is increasing in size, up to some number of megabytes. Option-double click on that entry, and the FLV will download.Make an offline copy of a YouTube video
Once you have it you cannot play it in the latest Flash Player, that only plays swfs, and this is an FLV. If you install the Perian components (http://www.perian.org/) you can then play the FLV in QuickTime Player.
You may need to rename the file that gets downloaded. Just call it what you like, with .flv at the end.
As any presenter knows, if the Internet’s involved it doesn’t pay to rely on being able to go online — it’s best to have offline copies of resources, just in case.
[I remember running one training session a few years ago, about how to use the Internet, where the connection died at the beginning of the session, with no hope of getting it back up and running that day …]
