Downloading videos from YouTube*, Google Videos, Myspace, Facebook and other popular video sites requires the use of downloader programs, browser addons or online video tools. Some downloaded video file formats may not play in your preferred video player.
This article is intended to help you through the maze of optons so that you can easily download videos for personal use. You can then view them later without connecting to the internet.
Video Downloaders
There are many downloaders available in various forms. Some offer more features than just downloading. Here is a selection of the most popular for you to choose from.
Downloaders for YouTube
New YouTube download and purchase features
Recently You Tube started testing a download and purchase feature, which gives video video owners the ability to allow the download of videos straight from YouTube either free or for a small fee. The video watch pages of these participating "partners" link to a download option (below the left-hand corner of the video) More details from the YouTube Blog YouTube Goes Offline
KeepVid 
- KeepVid is a browser Toolbar button for downloading YouTube FLV files.
KeepHD
- KeepHD is an online utility that downloads YouTube videos in a choice of formats: FLV,
3gp Mobile Download,
MP4 and if available
HD ( High Definition 720p) - How to Use: On the KeepHD site enter the URL of the video that you want to grab and hit the "Download Video" button.. No registration or plugins are needed. .
PWN YouTube
- Downloads FLV and mp4 formats There are three ways of downloading via PWN
- Go to their website and enter the video URL into the " Download a YouTube video from any web page:" URL box – handy if you are not viewing the video on YouTube.
- Type pwn in front of any YouTube URL.
- Add the browser bookmarklet from the PWN website and click it when you are viewing
any Youtube page or public webpage with an embedded YouTube video
Get Tube v.3.0 
- Get Tube is a downloadable utility for Mac to download videos from YouTube and to save format mp4 or mp3.
Downloaders for Multiple Video Sites including YouTube
Source: nickwheeleroz’s Flickr
Flash Video Resources Downloader
- This application offers three methods of video download:
- Enter the URL of video on the Flash Video Resources Downloader Page
- Install the Flash Video Resources Downloader 1.0.2 Firefox Extension
- A Greasemonkey script that allows downloads from 3 adult sites that I am not going to mention here.. The Greasemonkey Firefox addon must be already installed.
Flash Video Downloader 1.7
- The sites currently supported by Flash Video Downloader include: YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Video, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Break.com, Blip.tv (blip.tv), Spike (spike.com), MyVideo.de (myvideo.de), YourFileHost and others including adult sites.
- An added feature with this utility is that you can download Flash Games from: gamespot.com, community.games.com, armorgames.com, net-games.biz, gamesvine.com, zoopgames.com and flashgames247.com.
Clone2Go Free Video Converter 
- Clone2Go is a free software program for Windows that downloads and converts videos including YouTube and Google Videos FLV files The program includes a feature to split videos into smaller clips.
- You can download major file formats such as WMV, FLV, MPEG-4, MPG, RM, RMVB, AVI, 3GP and convert them to a variety of formats including MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV. It supports conversion to files playable on portable devices such as MP4 player, iPod, iPhone, Sony PSP, Microsoft Zune, Mobile Phone (e.g. Nokia N-Series), Pocket PC and smart phone.
Video Download Helper
- Video Download Helper is a Firefox extension that works with popular video sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.
- When DownloadHelper detects that it can do something for you, an icon at the bottom of your Firefox window becomes animated and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item. When you are on a page containing links to images or movies, you can download some or all of them at once.
- Converting files from your hard disk into a choice of multiple formats (Windows or Linux) is now possible with the installation of a file converter feature which uses the powerful FFMPEG video conversion utility. The feature is available from the extension’s preferences. An experimental Integrated MP3Tunes services allows you to send videos to mobile phones or to your private locker.
Net Video Hunter
- Net Video Hunteris a Firefox addon that allows you to download videos and music from most video-sharing sites – YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Metacafe, Dailymotion, iFilm, Videoegg, Veoh, Blip.tv, etc…
- This extension also supports the download of music if it’s in a player on a website (for example, Myspace Music player). The beauty of this extension is that it captures the video links (if it’s possible), and the video counter of all the videos you have played from a webpage. (e.g. a YouTube Playlist Page) Clicking on the Net Video Hunter icon at the bottom of the Firefox window displays the list of captured media files which you can then Play or Download. Turning off the video smoothing feature plays the video in lower quality which is ideal for slower computers or for preserving download bandwidth.
Flashgot
- One of the problems with trying to download online videos is finding the actual video file source. Flashgot is a Firefox extension that works alongside your preferred download manager (Windows, Linux, Mac) to download all the links, movies and audio clips of a page including links to FLV videos.
- Once downloaded and configured to recognize your download manager, Flashgot can be accessed via the Tools menu or by dragging and dropping a shortcut to your toolbar. The toolbar menu gives you options capturing video selections and creating galleries. You can choose to download all videos that Flashgot finds through its Auto Start feature, although this may create a massive amount of downloads. Download
Vixy Net 
- Vixy allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube’s videos,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online.
- When you submit a URL, it will download and convert to the video format, and then you can download the converted file.
- As well as an online converter Vixy now has a beta desktop version for Windows and Mac.
Orbit Downloader
I would have added Orbit to the top of the list had it not been for some of the Orbit forum messages which indicate a few issues with the newest version. I have as yet been unable to get it to work with YouTube through Firefox itself. However, If I use the Grab++ function in the Orbit program Tools Menu it will download YouTube videos that are playing in Firefox.
- Orbit Features:
- A free downloadable program, based on p2p and multi-source downloading technology, which integrates with Firefox, IE,Opera and Maxthon browsers.
- You can download and record streaming media, social music, social video, movie, flash and files from "anywhere" including Pandora, YouTube, Yahoo, Myspace and Rapidshare.
- Supports most of the file-sharing service websitesmegaupload, badongo, sendspace, yourfilehost, uploading, filefront, 4shared, turboupload, depositfiles, filefactory ……
- Supports: HTTP/ HTTPS/ FTP/ RTSP/ MMS
- Includes a pause and resume function which includes interrupted downloads
Facebook Video Downloader
Facebook Video
- Facebook Video allows the download and conversion of Facebook videos in one of two ways:
- Greasemonkey Script
- A new Firefox addon that lets you download and convert Facebook videos, and embed videos outside of Facebook.
Playing Downloaded Videos
Source: libraryman Flickr
If you download an .mp4 version of a video file, you can play it in Real Player, QuickTime Player, or iTunes. Most players do not support YouTube FLV files. My choice for a lightweight but fully featured video player is my default video player, VLC Player.
VLC
- VLC is A free video player that supports most file formats with no extra codecs needed, for example, MPEG, AVI, WMV, AV, FLV, MIDI, Flash, Real, MP4, MOV, 3GP, OGG ….For Windows, Linux, Mac OS X 10.5 or later and various other operating systems.
Another highly rated free player, which I have not tried, is:
GOM Media Player
- GOM Media PlayerFeatures: Supports most Codecs, plays incomplete or damaged AVI file by skipping the damaged frames and can play video files that are still in the process of being downloaded.
If you just want a program to play FLV videos there are a number of free programs including the one I used before I realized that VLC could play them.:
FLV Player
- FLV PlayerPlays Flash FLV and H.264 (MPEG-4) videos.
- This program also includes an option to install a free audio recorder browser toolbar, Free Recorder, which allows you to make MP3′s from anything you can hear on your PC, including sound tracks from videos, music, and more. Download current version FLV Player 2.0.25: CNET Download.com
Do you have any preferences for video download or video player applications?
Popularity: 20% [?]
I use the download helper plugin. I works great and I love that I have it to autoconvert the videos to a format for my iPod. I would like to just have the audio of some bids, it can do this but you need to pay
I wonder how many bids YouTube will sell? I saw one for 99 cents US. Way to much. Anything more than free is too much for YouTube flash quality.
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I’m so glad that you put this post together, Sue. I’ve tried a variety of suggestions and have yet to master any of them.
Thanks, Girly!
I haven’t tried any services but got my youtube files from internet explorer temp files. It’s quite easier your way though.
I agree. This used to be the only method. I used to examine my IE cache and copy out the media files. FireFox makes it a lot easier now.
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I haven’t looked close at YouTube’s terms of service, but I suspect that downloading a video with a tool may be a copyright violation but downloading with YouTube’s new feature would be authorized. Has anyone looked into this?
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My husband will love this article, he`s always on YouTube!
I use the latest version of Real Player which has the download option built in. This way I can get vidoes that interest me to watch on my iPod when I am traveling.
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How do you play the files on your iPod? Does Real Player convert the video to an iPod-friendly format?
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No, I do not have any preferences. Whenever I wish to download something, I simply follow the prompts and I do not even know how many I have sitting on my disc! Seems to work for me anyway.
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Really, this is really cool, and you did lots of homework too. Or, is this the result of your video frustration index gal? Thanks so much, you always provide useful stuff that even old bloggers (uhh err, well maybe not
old) uh hum, veteran bloggers can use 
Great article Sue – Thanks
Always,
Phil
Thanks, this will help me downloading tracks off YouTube, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time.
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I’d have to bow at the Youtube online video downloader. I lessens the hassle of installing programs when I wanted to download a youtube video right away.
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You have no idea as to how grateful I am that you posted this. I’ve been trying to figure out how to download videos from youtube and various other sites for quite some time now. I’ve featured some videos on my site from others that use still shots that I find inappropriate at times, and unfortunately, these videos aren’t always available from other sources. Through your tutorial here I now can get around those still shots by re-uploading to another site.
Thank you for this post!!
If you download a video and upload it to another site, you may be violating terms of service and copyright laws. In general, making an unauthorized copy of a video is copyright infringement.
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This is a great list of software and websites that people can use. It is helpful to have all these resources in one place.
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Downloading vidoes from youtube is so cool, i normaly use youtube converter its an programm and i normaly only use the one for downloading the sound in mp3 without tghe video.
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Hey,
Nice article, it only shows that videos from loadable sites gives the edge for popularity increase. Thanks!
For Youtube videos, mostly I’ll use Keepvid, easy and very convenient to use. However, recently, I’m more keen to use Firefox browser for the occassional downloading.
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For youtube I use mostly keepvid. Do you know what the best tool for downloading from vimeo would be?
Fast Video Download 2.0 (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3590) works great for Vimeo.
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IF it is real,youtube is welcome downloader to take there pict to our own private collections that will be good idea to me,at past,I usually use downloadyoutubevideos.com to get the videos.
Do any of these Extensions work for Flickr videos?
Thanks,
Jean
I understand that Orbit Downloader allows the download of Flickr videos. Read more here: http://lifehacker.com/5070345/download-flickr-videos-with-orbit-downloader
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Orbit Downloader is one of many ways to download Flickr videos. Just search for “flickr video download” in Google to learn of others.
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By the way, Orbit Downloader can be downloaded here: http://www.orbitdownloader.com/
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This software is the one I was looking for as I started experimenting with videos.
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Wow, quite an exhaustive list! Thanks – will be using this to grab some videos.
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Wow. I’ve been happy using VLC for so long. I did not even know these others existed.
VLC doesn’t download videos, does it?
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This is a nice list. I will definitely be using it later on
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I love videos. Thanx a lot for the very informative post. Wud try and download some of my favourite videos from You Tube.
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Nice list, i find that the quality tends to be rubbsih when i download Youtube videos. Will check out KeepHD
How can I download Youtube videos on a symbian mobile?
You can watch Youtube videos on Symbian S60 v3 phones with emTube according to this article: http://www.tecfre.com/watch-youtube-videos-on-symbian-s60-v3-phones-with-emtube/
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You can watch Youtube videos on Symbian S60 v3 phones with emTube according to this article: http://www.tecfre.com/watch-youtube-videos-on-symbian-s60-v3-phones-with-emtube/
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For those who don’t want to install a downloading tool, there are a number of websites like vixy.net that allow you to download videos. The instructions are easy: you copy the URL to the video you want to download into a form, click a button, and then download the file. For example, here are a couple:
http://www.videodl.org/
http://keepvid.com/
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Whoa Sue – that is one seriously comprehensive post. You’ve really done your homework. Many thanks for sharing this with your readers. I’m bookmarking this post cos I know I’ll ber refering back to it a lot. Many thanks
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Sue, I agree, you have outdone yourself. This list covers all the major video download tools along with a few helpful tools that were not as popular. Great post.
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Nice post..many will surely find this comprehensive and helpful, especially to those who loves downloading videos on you tube.
Thx for this excellent summarize of the different tools. Lots of work behind his post
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Wow very long post! Lots of useful tools to use tho. Thanks for putting this together for us
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Thanks for the info. That is interesting. Thanks again.
Miro is the only app that I know that can download videos from YouTube and other video sites. Never know that there are so many other apps that I can use.
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Great post, very informative. I think a lot of people will find this very useful.
Thank you,you rock !
This list is awesome
How can you find all this site alone ?
I am on web 4h/day and i know only 2 of this tools…:|
Hi:I am interested in this site and thaks a lot for sharing with us.
I do find it quite annoying to have bookmarked a video from Youtube only to find that later it gets removed for one reason or another.
Being able to download and keep a video would be great.
I bookmarked this page so I can check out the services later, thanks
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I am really glad that I found your site.. Thanks so much for the helpful information.
Wonderful! I’m sharing this! Good reviews on the softwares.
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thanx
thank you for all of this information!
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great list of tools here. I am actually using some of them. Thanks
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Nice article, really detailed; and you have covered some really important aspects.One other advantage is there, which is very crucial.
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I haven’t used the programs you listed, but I have used this tool called Download Helper to download songs and videos, and then I would find some media conversion site to convert the flv files to mp3 or mpeg. Thanks for listing out these tools though, I will try them out.
Nice list of video download tools. I will Net video hunter with Firefox addon. Thanks for infomation.
Tremendous wealth of information you have!! Just stumbled and tweeted this article – it’s quite valuable indeed. Thanks for sharing!
Holy smokes, this is the mother lode of plug-ins and downloads. I think that the firefox plug-in is probably the most useful for me, but seriously this is an awesome list of tools and links.
I m very crazy about new video download. Thanks for good information sharing. I will try Keepvid for youtube video downloading.
Flashgot is great. Too bad it doesn’t support Opera but oh well, it shouldn’t be surprise to me – there’s almost no extensions for opera…
Opera used to be a nice alternative to IE, but then FireFox took off. Opera still has its niche purposes, but for most web surfing, FireFox and IE do much better.
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buddy great stuff provider, much helped me your source.
This article is a great help. There are such interesting videos on YouTube. Specially the political ones. I find those political videos most interesting. I always wanted to download them and have a huge collection of my favorite videos for myself, but didn’t know how. You have solved this problem now. Thanx a lot. I just bookmarked your article.
good resources. i’m gonna try flash video downloader… seems to be pretty broad in what it can do.
Great site. Thanks for information.
nice stuff
Youtube is really great for downloading any kind of video and I always use it. Really great information given here.
Love the blog layout!
Extremely valuable information. I have been trying to figure out how to download videos from Youtube and other video sites for awhile now. Appreciate this.
Nice helpful post this is. I have bookmarked a huge number of YouTube videos which I wanted to download and keep them as a record for myself but didn’t really thought that they could be downloaded. Will love to download them now, specially the ones of those historical moments.
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Excellent! I really like this posting. Very detailed and useful. I’ll try this soon with my laptop. Thank you so much..
It is really awesome that we can download videos from youtube, and other websites! I can have music videos directly on my computer now which is just great
Some very in-depth info here Sue, I still was wondering if you know how to download flash games from websites? This one has been bugging me for awhile.
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You can try using Firefox by going to Tools, then page info, and try to find the flash file you are trying to download. Hope that helps!
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Hey thanks techandtoys, that worked like a charm! And thanks Sue for the resources.
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Doesn’t seem to work on every site I tried, some have it blocked. Oh well thanks anyhow.
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What an awesome list! Bookmarked for sure! KeepVid kicks ass…when it works!
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Yea sometimes KeepVid randomly doesn’t work, but it is great when it does.
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Thanks for the relevant Article.
I download clone2go. This is really cool. So I can minimize the size of video. I also download netvideohunter. This downloader is so much powerful than previous flash downloader I know. This tool do not only download but also search the real link of the video.
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Great article – I am looking to download a video showing a parking diaster for our company site Gatwick Airport
Parking
Great collection and come so handy. Followed and bookmarked.
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KeepHD tool was great, I don’t even know of another tool that can download HD videos. Thanks a lot Sue.
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Thank you for useful information. I can not live a day without my iPod….
Good resource of downloading video and video converters. Download helper is good site. Thanks.
Nice post, This post is really very important and useful for me. i appreciated to the author for this useful post……
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oh man its really wonderfull… like i was worry that where can i download and convert these movies…. but now have got some idea
Thanks for this info Sue, it will really help me as I didn’t even know how to download videos.
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Nice list of video download tools. I will Net video hunter with Firefox addon. Thanks for infomation.
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I love the video from You Tube, and constantly downloading it from there. Thank you for your post, very detailed and interesting…
Some great sites are the ones which allow you to download the MP3 of a youtube video.
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I use VideoGet for ripping vids from the net, it supports more websites and file types than most other programs I have seen and it’s really easy to use.
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I’m a big fan of Netflix + Handbrake. I can burn all the DVDS onto my Apple TV and watch them whenever I want. It’s legal, but not. Well, it should be.
who downloads these videos when you can stream them or embed them practically anywhere..
-Jack
is that plugin is working, anyway, i will try that plugin. i am using VLC in playing all my download videos from youtube.
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Nice collection of download versions that are available here. I haven’t used youtube for download..Now I had an idea to use.
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I’ve been looking online for video download tools and this post keeps coming up. This is an extremely valuable post. Thanks, Sue.
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great list, thanks!
Just what I was looking for!!
I couldn’t imagine that there are so many ways to download video! It’s really convenient:)
Due to some restriction in my office I can not able to download any content that relate to the video!
I use Real player to download stuff from internet. You tube as well…
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great blog! lots of sources, i rip music videos from youtube using mp3ify.com fast and free
Awesome posting. I also came across another tool on firefox a few days ago called download helper and is a firefox addon. It can download any video on the web. It has worked perfectly so far.
I use the latest version of Real Player which has the download option built in
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I using downloadhelper and ? think its really well.
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Thanks for the guide! Now I can download videos by myself instead of asking my eldest brother!
No, I do not have any preferences. Whenever I wish to download something, I simply follow the prompts and I do not even know how many I have sitting on my disc! Seems to work for me anyway.
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Well I updated to the latest wordpress 2.9.1, and I still seem to be having the issue where it just times out…. I am thinking it may have something to do with the php memory limit… not 100% positive though. Any ideas?
I haven’t tried any services but got my youtube files from internet explorer temp files. It’s quite easier your way though.