How to Download YouTube Videos

by on Jul 10, 2008 | 11 comments

Have you ever seen a video on YouTube or any other video sharing website that you wanted to download, but didn’t have the option to? Luckily, there are many ways to do this. In this article, we’ll explore several of your options, both web-based and software based.

Web-Based Methods

Here are several websites that will allow you to download and/or convert a Youtube video:

A website I recently discovered called Zamzar will easily allow to you to download YouTube videos. While Zamzar is still in beta, I have used it extensively and haven’t encountered any issues with it. To start, you go to the site www.zamzar.com. Click on the “Download Videos” tab. Then you copy and paste the YouTube URL, choose the video format that you would like (most will prefer .avi or .mpg), enter your email address and click “convert”. It couldn’t be more simple. It then uploads the video, and depending on the size of the video, you will have a downloadable file in your inbox in about 5 minutes or less. Quite simple, no?

Zamzar will also convert between many different formats. It has the capabilities to convert to and from many common image, document, music, and video formats, all without downloading any software and all for free. The converted file is stored for 24 hours after you receive the email, so be sure to download the video shortly after you get it.

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Windows Software

Windows has a lot of software available so that you can accomplish the task locally:

Mac Software

TubeTV or GetTube are your best options.

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  • alen

    one of my faivorite is http://tubezoid.com check it too

  • http://nucleare-coffee.com Ira Pautova

    I use VideoGet. It downloads from YouTube, GoogleVideo, MetaCafe, MySpase, Photobucket and other 500+ video websites.
    Full List of supported videos websites:
    http://nuclear-coffee.com/php/supported_services.php?id=VideoGet

    VideoGet also providing you with ability to convert each video in most popular formats for more comfortable video playback. VideoGet supports AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV, FLV, MP4, 3GP, MP3 file formats, so you will be able not only to view it, but also put it into your iPod, mobile phone or any other portable device

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R9VCNtFrs4
    http://nuclear-coffee.com/php/products.php?id=VideoGet

  • http://www.geezergeek.net Floyd Bufkin

    There is an extension for Firefox called DownloadHelper that allows you to download YouTube (and many other sites) video. And one that’s even easier, there is a Greasemonkey Script called (appropriately) YouTube Download, that also works.

  • steveking

    YouTubeRobot.com today announces YouTube Robot 2.0, a tool that enables you to download video from YouTube.com onto your PC, convert it to various formats to watch it when you are on the road on mobile devices like mobile phone, iPod, iPhone, Pocket PC, PSP, or Zune.

    YouTube Robot allows you to search for videos using keywords or browse video by category, author, channel, language, tags, etc. When you find something noteworthy, you can preview the video right in YouTube Robot and then download it onto the hard disk drive. The speed, at which you will be downloading, is very high: up to 5 times faster than other software when you download a single file and up to 4 times faster when you download multiple files at a time.

    Manual download is not the only option with YouTube Robot. You may as well schedule the download and conversion tasks to be executed automatically, even when you are not around. Downloading is followed by conversion to the format of your choice and uploading videos to a mobile device (if needed). For example, you can plug in iPod, select the video, go to bed, and when you wake up next morning, your iPod will be ready to play new YouTube videos.

    Product page: ww w.youtuberobot.com
    Direct download link: w ww.youtuberobot.com/download/utuberobot.exe
    web-site: ww w.youtuberobot.com
    E-mail: support@youtuberobot.com

  • kuzma
  • Mal

    Another couple of good sites are http://www.mp4some.com for instant downloads in MP4 and a few other formats or http://www.mediaconverter.org to convert into a bunch of other formats.

  • Kizomba

    Hi.
    I use http://www.vid2pc.com , get flv, mp4 and 3gp,
    Free tools to convert and extract audio on site.

    Tanks

  • Alfalfa

    Unfortunately, almost all devices don’t support flv format, so you need to convert your YouTube videos. On this site you can find a lot of tools that combine downloaders and converters – for all your needs http://soundtaxi.org/

  • Rory

    Another great software application to put on your list is http://www.MyVideDownloader.com they have been around since 2007 and still working great. Just added support for HD videos up to 1080p!

  • Stan

    VideoDownloadX seems to be run by marketing morons. To get access, they insist you fill out a survey, none of which had any relevance to me. Within the surveys, it becomes clear the idiot who wrote it doesn’t understand how someone could not have a cell phone, and similar other short sighted tunnel visioned things. I’ll leave this application zero to the CA crowd.

  • Popdina

    I download youtube videos for ipod and convert it with the help of Convert-tune.

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