23 Ways to Download YouTube Videos

Google has a solid amount of cash in its pockets, but with all the recent lawsuits against YouTube one has to wonder if it’s time to salvage whatever videos you like from the service and save them somewhere where evil attorneys won’t look – your hard drive.

Luckily, there are literally dozens of tools for downloading videos from YouTube and/or converting those YouTube videos to some format other than .flv. It’s hard to pick the best one, as they all have pluses and minuses. Thus, we’ve chosen 23 YouTube downloader tools we’ve found to be actually working. Here they are, categorized according to the platform they work on:

Web based

1. YouTubeX doesn’t have a lot of options, but it’s simple, and it works. It also enables you to share the YouTube video with your friends via e-mail. Unfortunately, all the files are called get_video, and you have to add the .flv extension manually.

www.youtubex.com

2. KeepVid is another simple site. No hassle, works not only for YouTube movies but for a number of other sites, including Google Video, MySpace Video, DailyMotion and others. Again, you have to add the .flv extension by hand.

keepvid.com

3. VideoDownloader is very similar to KeepVid, but supports even more video sharing sites, and it’s also available as a Firefox extension. Just like with KeepVid, all downloads are in .flv format. We recommend MediaCoder for free conversion.

javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

4. YouTube Downloads takes the cake in the longest domain name contest. It also separates itself by using a proxy for downloading videos, which means that you might be able to get videos even if YouTube access is blocked at your workplace or in the country you live. Just search Google for YouTube videos, and copy/paste the URL into YouTube Downloads.

www.downloadandsaveyoutubevideos.info

5. Zamzar is an online file format conversion site which can do a lot more than just converting YouTube videos to another format and downloading them to your hard drive, but it’s doing a great job so we had to include it here. Thoroughly tested by us and highly recommended. See the video of it in action here.

www.zamzar.com

Zamzar

6. YouTubia separates itself from the crowd by enabling you to search as well as download YouTube files. Options are scarce, but it works.

www.youtubia.com

7. VidGrab is another simple site that works with YouTube, Google Video, MySpace and Break.com. Besides the download function, the site also sports a top list of most viewed videos.

www.vidgrab.com

8. Vixy offers both downloading videos and converting them into DivX avi, mov, mp4, 3gp, or mp3 (for audio only) formats. The conversion works well enough, but sometimes results in slightly choppy playback.

vixy.net

9. Hey! Watch is an ambitious video encoding service with a large number of options, especially when it comes to converting videos to portable media player formats (it even supports my trusty iRiver H340.) Most online video converters often produce crappy results, with video and audio being out of sync, and this problem is also present on Hey! Watch, but it happens rarely.

heywatch.com

10. Media Converter can be a little slow, but the results of the video conversion are quite good. We’ve converted some YouTube videos to avi (mpeg4 + mp3) format and it worked well. The tool is not limited to video conversion; it also supports several audio and document formats.

www.mediaconverter.org

Media Converter

11. KcoolOnline is a web-based converter which supports 98 video sharing web sites, including YouTube. It has literally zero options, so it’s recommended for those who like to keep it simple.

www.kcoolonline.com

Windows Applications

12. VDownloader is a desktop application that catches YouTube, Google Video, and Grinvi video links from your clipboard. Start it up, copy the video URL and click download. It automatically converts the videos to mpeg or avi formats.

www.softpedia.com/progDownload/VDownloader-Download-51327.html

13. YouTube Grabber downloads files from Youtube in .flv format. Copy and paste the URL of a video from YouTube into the program, press ?grab?, and the file will be downloaded into the same directory as the program.

www.download.com/Youtube-Grabber/3000-2071_4-10574801.html

14. Orbit Downloader is a desktop application which can download videos from a wide variety of sites. The download process is very simple, just hover your mouse over the video and you’ll get a button that says ?Get It?. The developers of the program claim that it’s very fast (up to 500% faster, they say) due to its P2P download technology.

www.orbitdownloader.com

15. My Video Downloader. With all these free tools, it’s actually funny to see a commercial one. It’s called My Video Downloader, and while it does look solid and offers a lot of conversion options (a free trial which enables you to download 10 videos is available), we’re not sure it offers enough to warrant a price tag.

myvideodownloader.com

16. KeepV is a desktop downloader as well as a converter, which can convert the downloaded videos from flv to avi, mov, mp4, or 3gp formats.

keepv.com

17. VideoGet boasts being able to download video clips from more than 100 video sharing websites. We haven’t tested all of them, so we’re just going to take their word for it. It’s a deskop application with a nice, simple interface, and a solid number of options.

nuclear-coffee.com/php/products.php

VideoGet

18. TubeSucker is a desktop YouTube video downloader with some interesting options, including batch downloading large amounts of videos from a certain user. See the video tour on the site.

www.newrad.com/software/tubesucker/

OS X

19. Get Tube is an OS X application which lets you download video or audio files from YouTube, DailyMotion and Kewego.

web.mac.com/simonvrel/iWeb/software/v.1.0.html

Linux

20. Youtube-dl. Here’s some love for Linux users. Youtube-dl is a program that lets you download YouTube clips in flv format, which both mplayer and VLC can easily chew up.

www.nuxified.org/blog/download_youtube_video_files_with_youtube_dl

21. YouTube Ripper is not actually an application; it’s a simple script that rips all videos that match a keyword, uploaded by a specific YouTube user. We don’t really have ideas on what to use this for, but maybe you do! PHP port is also available.

nlindblad.org/2007/04/08/youtube-ripper-collectors-edition/

Plugins

22. Vidtaker is a Firefox-only plugin that can download videos from most streaming websites: Google Video, YouTube, MySpace, as well as a number of nasty adult SomethingTube spinoffs (Pornotube, YouPorn etc). It automatically converts the video to a DivX avi.

www.vidtaker.com

23. Ook? Video Ook! Yes, that’s the full name of this Firefox plugin, which enables you to download videos from YouTube and several other video sharing web sites. It features one click downloading and integration with the popular DownThemAll Firefox plugin.

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2584

Written by Stan Schroeder

21 thoughts on “23 Ways to Download YouTube Videos

  1. steveking1

    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: 3w.youtuberobot.com
    Direct download link: 3w.youtuberobot.com/download/utuberobot.exe
    Company web-site: 3w.youtuberobot.com

  2. Ben Yvet

    http://www.newrad.com/software/tubesucker/

    TubeSucker – YouTube Video Downloader is the most powerful YouTube Video Downloader and Media Player System on the planet. It includes a built-in Batch Converter to convert FLV files to MP4, AVI, MOV, MP3, or WAV format.

    Tube Sucker lets you batch download 1000’s of videos of your favorite artist from youtube.com.

    Batch Download All videos for a given search. Click and go. TubeSucker will crawl through YouTube and retrieve all the videos for your search, one right after the other.

    Download Videos of all your MP3’s with one click. And then run it again for live in concert versions of your MP3’s (or other type of music file).

    Simultaneously Download up to 8 videos at a time for super fast downloading with just one instance of TubeSucker running.

    Run multiple copies on your PC at the same time, each running different searches, giving you the ability to download 8, 16, 24, even 32 videos at a time.

    Download Videos From ANY WebSite

    Batch Download list of YouTube URL’s

    Ability to filter out search results and retrieve only videos that less than and/or greater than a given time length. For example, you can retrieve all videos less than 20 seconds long.

    Send Voice Emails with your youtube links.

    Includes an easy-to-use built-in media player that lets you watch videos, listen to music, and browse through pictures, and easily email the links or files to friends. Includes many cool and novel features.

  3. Video Download Capture

    Video Download Capture is the best videos download tool to help you download online videos and download music videos; the most powerful video download search engine will help you get any video as you want. It’s also a great tool to download free videos. The built-in video editing tool will help you crop, trim, convert videos to any format and size. Get videos for your iPod, iTunes, iPhone, PowerPoint presentation, and PSP etc. If want to capture any online videos such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Google Video, Megavideo, iMeem, MySpace, and Yahoo etc, Video Download Capture is just for you.

  4. Subrosa

    Try GreenBits. http://greenbits.ucoz.com
    It’s a download manager that allows you to download youtube videos too. You can download High Quality MP4 videos as well as low quality FLV videos. It is absolutely free, no paid version, no adware or malware. Softpedia has awarded it 100% clean award too.

  5. Fdab

    Unfortunately, almost all devices donโ€™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 โ€“ for all your needs http://soundtaxi.org/

  6. Humberto Stidam

    It is always awesome to see the place technological innovation goes and the long term of gaming is no different. There are numerous cool and really modern technologies arising. There is no way to tell which a single will make the next massive wave, but a person point is for certain, it will have some thing to do with receiving rid of the remote as we know it!

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