How to download Youtube videos on your HDD

Mar 2, 2007 20:21 GMT  ·  By

Youtube.com, the most expensive site ever purchased, gained its notoriety by offering users the freedom to upload and share video content highly appreciated among the internet users. This incredible service provided since 2005 unleashed a real frenzy within the internet community. The wide diversity of video content offered on Youtube attracted so many visitors that transformed it into an internet reference point.

All the video content is provided using a flash embedded player which restricts the video to be downloaded and stored on a local drive. This Flash Player acts like an in-browser streaming video player at a decent speed and image quality. Video hungry people thought abut a ripping method to download desired video clips from Youtube. Solutions have not been waited too long.

Various applications emerged on Internet featuring Youtube ripping. The resulting video file is saved on the local disk using .FLV extension. FLV is the acronym for Flash Video. It means that the video is enclosed into a flash shell, therefore playing it requires a FLV video player. In case you planned to watch the saved Youtube videos using your favorite video player, you need to reconsider it, unless you convert the FLV file yourself into a common video format like AVI or Mpeg.

Let's get to work not.

After some investigations and tests, I came across the result that there are different software combinations when dealing with Youtube ripping:

- Software that only downloads the videos from Youtube when the video's link is manually provided. In this case, you need to browse Youtube.com and to manually copy the link. Watching the downloaded video requires an FLV player. - Applications that both download and play the saved videos. - Programs that have a Youtube content browser which enables you to browse and search videos from inside the applications and then download them to disk. - And finally software applications that provide: live video player, download function and offline player and even conversion, all-in-one.

Under the terms presented above, I checked Softpedia's database looking for relevant software. I will share with you descriptions and personal opinions regarding each application.

Youtube Video Grabber

This is maybe the simplest application of this kind that downloads Youtube video content. No installation required, eating only 184 Kb of disk space and about 3 k of RAM memory, it is "trained" to do only one thing: to grab video from Youtube and to place it on the disk in the same location with the executable file. Nothing fancy, no additional spectacular features. You just provide the link and it does its job. To play the video you will need to use an FLV player.

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Youtube Video Downloader

It is a free application that allows the user to search videos according to desired keywords. Once the video is located, it can be downloaded on disk. The saved file won't have any file extension. Do not worry, you need to manually add the .flv extension in order to be recognized by Windows as a flash video file. After the file has been assigned with an extension it can be opened with any flv player.

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Youtube Cone

This application is more gifted with features than the sharp and concise piece of software presented previously. It is able to search Youtube videos by keywords, preview them (video player included) and download to disk. A complete review is available on Softpedia. Click here to read our Editor's opinion regarding this software.

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Video Piggy

Well, this application is a hybrid one with no player included. It is able to easily download Youtube movies and immediately convert them to a common file format like avi or mpeg. Instant conversion is a real treat spearing us of installing a video converter. And that's not all, it can even resize the video media in order to be compatible with Ipod or PSP. Isn't it awesome? Usually, good things have a price and this application has its own. 24.95 US dollars. Yes, it is shareware, not freeware like the first two programs. Due to this fact, it is limited to 15 seconds conversion of each video file. Download it from Softpedia and take a look! Test it! If the features satisfy you do not hesitate to purchase it.

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By using one of these applications you will be able to show your friends all the videos you like most even when you have troubles with the internet connection.