If you happen to find a copyrighted video on youtube it’s only a number of days before it will be removed by Viacom. Therefore, I’m going to share with you how to download youtube videos to your computer before Viacom takes away all your saved favorites on your youtube account. There are actually three ways that I have been able to do this:
Vixy.net - Just go to the website and copy and paste the youtube url into their search bar. It will download the youtube video and can convert it into various formats. The downfall to this website is that it is very busy and their server is usually down or beyond slow. It might be better just to try the options below.
Greasemonkey - This program is a free plug-in for the FireFox browser. To begin you have to install it on FireFox and then restart your browser. Greasemonkey can do hundreds of neat things you never knew was possible. It’s like videogame cheat codes but instead it works with the internet. You just have to add a “user script” to it’s functions for each “cheat” you want it to perform. Clicking on YouTube to Me after installing Greasemonkey will make downloading youtube videos a cinch by placing a “download” link at the top of every youtube page. Here is a website with detailed instructions and pictures.
VideoDL.org - If Greasemonkey sounds complicated to you or if you don’t have FireFox, you might want to try this. Just go to VideoDL.org and copy and paste the youtube video link you want to download into the search bar. It will then prompt you to save the video to your computer. The only drawback to VideoDL.org is that you have to always go to their website and copy & paste the youtube url everytime you want to download something.
Very Important:
YouTube videos online have all been converted to Flash videos with the .flv extension. You have to have a FLV player to watch them after downloading. (Vixy.net bypasses this step but like I mentioned previously, the server may be down or very slow.) Click here to download a FLV player. When you download and save the video make sure you add .flv to the filename or it may not work. Also, saving .flv as the extension will enable you to convert it later to a .mpg, .mp4 (iPod), .wmv, or any other type of video with the numerous flash video converter programs that are out there right now. Total Video Converter seems to be one of the most popular.
9 users responded in this post
you’re awesome!…..I’ve been so pissed off lately, that a lot of the videos I love are being removed , one by one!
Thanks Chris!
You’re welcome! It pisses me off too.
Sweet, I’m stocking up an entire Evangelion archive as I type this ^_^
I remember reading up on greasemonkey long ago, but now I have it… hehehe useful for h4×0rz1ng (white hat, comon guys!)
Thanks to all who help make fx the best browser in der welt. Pwnzer, and kudos to the scriptors! I’ma gonna plug in some of my own code bank, mebbe I’ll upload some… OK comment long enough, I rate this 10/10
HTML is blocked :p, couldn’t help myself haha. Nice guide, too Tallfreak!
Does anyone know a way to allow RESUMEABLE downloads? My connection is a slow one, and if I lose the non-resumeble download I have to start all over again.
Oh I didn’t know that there was a way to do this. Looks like I’m going to be busy now downloading all of the videos that are potential copyright infringements… muahaha
Thanx For Post
Hey guys, I put a video up I made last year, it is messing up real bad.. I want to, upload it to my hard drive, and redo it.. I had done it once befoe on one of my video’s, but can not find the url, I embeded it with.. Hope you guys can help me..It needs fixed bad.How ever, I used a so called program thinking it would save it to my hard drive, and did not, it sounds good, but on U tube, its stalling and studdering real bad..
nice blog post! VLC player is a good player to watch these videos, also MPCstar plays FLV files
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