Sunday 21 April 2013

How to download videos from youtube.com

How to download videos from youtube.com

Have you ever wanted to download a video from youtube.com for later watching?

What about when you visit a website that is linking to a video and you don't have time to watch it and then you go back to the site to play it to only find that it has been removed from youtube.com due to "Copyright Infringement". Or it has been removed by the original uploader for some other reason.

Well the safest thing to do if it you find a video that you like on youtube.com is to download it so you have a copy yourself which you can watch whenever you want or even upload to a server and host yourself for others to watch.

I used to have a bookmarklet that did this for me but as all these big sites keep changing their source code it doesn't work anymore.

Therefore the simplest solution to download a copy of a video from youtube.com is to do this.

1. Go to the video on youtube.com e.g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxI1skgga1U (which is the Ethos Documentary by Woody Harrelson)
2. Change the URL in the address bar by just putting an ss before the word youtube e.g ssyoutube so that url will become http://www.ssyoutube.com/watch?v=bxI1skgga1U
3. You can test this by clicking the link above (the one with ssyoutube in it).
4. You will then be taken to a free downloader page which will give you various options for downloading the video such as the format, FLV, MP4, 3GP and quality options as well.
5. Click on the format you want and then the download will begin.

Quick and easy and a nice little trick to save those videos that only last an hour or two on youtube.com!

1 comment:

David Jackson said...

Great trick! I have been downloading all the videos I want and putting them on my own server for ages now using this method as I was fed up with youtube accounts being suspended or videos being taken down.

Thanks!