Download youtube video to PC

[adrenaline]

Ok, I noticed many people share youtube videos, well instead of watching them once, why not download them and save them for a rainy day...

Just before I get started here are some key words which you might like to no more about…

URL- this is the name you type into an address bar, this is a URL “http://www.whatevaname.net”
File extension- This is the prefix attached to a file which tells it of its contents and how to read it. Examples are: MPEG, AVI, MOV ect...
ZIP- A zipped folder is a compressed folder, period. You need to uncompress it to view the files again. There are many programs that do this, I like Winrar, and I use a very old version because its smaller and simple… here it is http://download.oldversion.com/winrar200.exe


Youtube videos have a FLV file extension, which most computers cant read outside of Youtube, think of it as being in Arabic and to understand it you need it needs to be translated.

There are 3 ways to do this…

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Option 1
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The simplest way is to Copy the URL of the video and go to the site mentioned below and Paste it… and then put in what type of file extension you want it in…

http://vixy.net/

Now there are not a lot of choices here… but it includes a MAC format so for MAC users this is the best.

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Option 2 – Recommended
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This method is a bit harder then option 1 what you do is actually download the FLV file, “the Arabic file” and watch it in a Program or “translator”.

First to download the file, go to ..

http://keepvid.com/

Insert the URL of the video into keepvid, and download the FLV file (note, this site downloads more then youtube videos, which is nice)

Now once you downloaded it onto your computer, heres the software you need to view it, simple.

http://www.applian.com/files/FLVPlayerSetup.exe

It’s free, but there are some optional downloads that I wouldn’t accept.

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Option 3 – Advanced
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What about saving those FLV files into WMV, AVI or any other extension so you can watch them in windows media player or even make a DVD out of them?
Well I got that figured out, there are many programs that convert FLV, but most are infested with a spyware if you can find a clean simple one that isn’t a demo, I would like to hear about it, but for now, this is the next best thing.

This is advanced, it used MSDOS.

First to download the file, go to ..

http://keepvid.com/

Insert the URL of the video into keepvid, and download the FLV file (note, this site downloads more then youtube videos, which is nice)

Then you need to look at FFMPEG it is a 2meg program that runs on MSDOS, which is that black screen with white writing on it yes, it’s scary if you haven’t used it before but it’s not that hard if you follow instructions.

This is the program FFMPEG it includes instructions which are a bit hard to grasp. You first need to extract it. (It uses ZIP. Google it if you have no idea, WINZIP)

http://www.worldtv.com/labs/easy_ffmpeg.zip

Now I believe the FFMPEG creators made a simple error which is leaving out the MSDOS program which makes life so much easier.

I made one, took me 2 seconds on notepad.

http://download3-7.files-upload.com/2007-04/25/04/CMD.BAT

Add that file into the extracted FFMPEG folder.

Now take your FLV file put it in the FFMPEG folder also.

Then double click FFMPEG.exe to install.

Then double click the CMD.BAT which I made.

All you need to do is type in the CMD.BAT is “ffmpeg -i nameovfile.flv nameovfile.wmv” replace “nameovfile” with the name of the FLV file.

Done, you will now have a file named nameovfile.wmv in the FFMPEG folder. You can also turn it into, AVI, MPEG and I am sure many others.

Enjoy. By Charlie TARABAY

[virus]

Nice... This weekend I will have to follow the steps cause there is some Slipknot live videos that I would like to just double click instead of navigating to them on the site.

[adrenaline]

I know... especialy like things that dont go 2 air, and probs will get banded because of privacy breaches..

btw i would go with the 2nd method if its just 4 ur comp, quicker...

[virus]

That's the method I was going to give a shot with... There is one live Slipknot song that I just could watch everyday! Lol, would be nice to have it on my computer n on my desktop in an .avi file!

[theara]

sounds interesting. i'll give it a try when my computer starts responding to me. I would like to get the columbine documentary and all the other neat things