Mar 19, 2008

How To Download and Save YouTube Videos

Have you ever wanted to save a YouTube video in order to watch it on an offline player or embed it in a presentation? Well here is an easy way to download and save YouTube videos or other videos from similar sites: The Video DownloadHelper extension for Firefox is a free Firefox plugin that will allow you to easily save videos or images from web pages that you visit, including YouTube videos. Simply go to the link above and install the plugin in your Firefox browser. The extension will add an icon just to the right of the search bar that will become animated whenever there are video or image files that it recognizes.

To use the Video DownloadHelper just click on the down arrow next to the animated icon and click on the title of the video or image you want to download. It will open up a file explorer window and allow you to save the video anywhere you like. YouTube and similar videos will be saved in a Flash .FLV format. These files can be played by opening them up using your browser, the Adobe Flash Player, or with the free VLC Media Player.

This is far and away the easiest way to capture movies for replaying offline, for archiving, or for embedding in presentations.