Video Download

YouTube, Google, Metacafe & more

Video Download now, Watch later

When was the last time you reserved time to sit down and watch a video on the computer that you know is lenghty only to have trouble connecting? Or it stutters, stammers, stops and starts? What if you still use dial-up? (I'm sorry, to be politically correct I suppose I should say "bandwidth challenged")

Wouldn't it be nice to download it when it's available and then watch it at your convenience?

Of course it would!

Video download helper now has the option to convert the files for you automatically. With the latest version, you can download another "helper" program and have the files automatically converted to an easier format than FLV; AVI is the default and works a little bit easier in Windows.

You can find a how-to page here.

Update: June 2008

These video sites keep changing their formats. Good news is that I have found a downloader that works on sites the others didn't and is SO EASY TO USE!

It's an add-on for FireFox, appropriately called Video download helper.

What? You don't use FireFox? Get It. It's Free.

Update: September 2007

Good news & bad news. Good news is that Google allows downloading video directly from their site. Bad news is that YouTube changed their format and now most downloaders don't work - at least not until they update them. See my blog post to find out which site supports the new format here.

Here's how:

Step 1 - Download the file
First, copy the URL, then head on over to this site and paste into the url box and click download.

Sound simple enough? Want to make it easier yet? You are using Firefox, right?
If so, there is a Firefox video download plugin that puts a little icon in the lower right corner of Firefox that you can click to download the video of the page you are on. Simply follow a link to the video, click the icon and when it prompts you (may be 30 seconds or more), tell it where to save the video.

Step 2 - Pickup a player
Not quite done yet. The video is saved in an .flv format (flash video). You need an .flv player.

Download the FREE Riva FLV Encoder 2 or another of your choosing. Riva does more than just play .flv's, but for now that's all you need. Install Riva Player, then go get your video downloads from YouTube, Google, MetaCafe or whoever. If you perform the default install of Riva, it will automatically associate Riva Player with .flv files so that if you double click or open an .flv file, Riva will open and play it for you.

Note: Riva Player seems to work well, but I was unable to find a way to enlarge the screen.
Video Lan Player, although found to be a bit buggy when stopping and starting the video, will enlarge to the entire screen.

If the video has good enough resolution for that (the recent movie from Aaron Russo at freedomtofascism.com worked great on my big screen TV), you might want to choose their player instead.

Do You Create Videos?
If so, I have found an absolute MUST HAVE resource to have available. I'm no video expert, but what I do know - and a lot more - can be found at:

A Couple More Notes
Video download is going to be habit forming. Remember that videos will eat disk space like I eat dark chocolate, so watch your consumption if your disk space is limited.

Ok, from what I can tell, these methods don't work with Yahoo! videos, at least not that I can tell. Their videos always have ads first and many times play only the ad and never the feature that caused you to click in the first place. Maybe they'll fix that, who knows.

Most people want video downloads of YouTube, Google and MetaCafe but the list that the Firefox plugin alone supports is very extensive (check it out on the plugin link above).

If you like music videos

Can't get enough?

Return from Video Download to Free Computer Consultant Home