KeepVid
You’ve all probably wondered how you can download the videos you find on YouTube to your hard drive so that you can use them for other projects, such as PowerPoint presentations or video montages. Or, perhaps you’d like to take them with you to places where you might not have access to the Internet. While there are many ways to do that, most focus on extensions or add ons for the Firefox Web browser. And that may leave you wondering if you can do the same with Internet Explorer. Well, the answer is yes and it’s very simple to do. First, just direct your browser to www.KeepVid.com.
KeepVid is a Web based YouTube downloader that’s very easy to use! It can be used anywhere and accessed from any regular Web browser. The homepage looks like this:
You’ll see the page title, a text box to enter in a YouTube URL (or Web site address or link of a video), a few advertisements and a Top Videos box.
What you’re going to want to focus on is the URL bar at the top of the page.
Now, what you’re going to need is the URL of the YouTube video you want to download. There are a couple of ways to get that. If someone has sent you the link in an e-mail, you already have it. In that case, it looks something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dj298NRTO8.
If you’re watching the video on the YouTube Web site itself, you can find the URL in the address bar of your browser.
Or, you can find it in a little box on the right hand side of the page.
The best way to get the URL is to copy and paste it into KeepVid (highlight the entire URL, right click your mouse, select Copy, move to KeepVid.com, right click in the URL bar and select Paste). Then click on the Download button.
You’ll then see this screen:
I have underlined in red your two download options. The first is classified as “Low Quality” and the second is “High Quality.” The low quality video is in the Adobe Flash format and the high quality is an .MP4 (Apple QuickTime format). You can either do as they say underneath each link (right click on the download link, choose Save Target As and download it or just click on the Download button and it will bring you to the File Download dialogue box where you can choose to save the file and rename it to whatever you’d like). I’d recommend renaming it, because the default file name will always be “get_video” or “video.” I think it’s always better to choose the higher quality option. The file size isn’t that much larger than the other one, so it won’t take much longer to download. Plus, the QuickTime format is much more versatile.
If you get the QuickTime video, you can just import it into your iTunes or QuickTime software and watch the video whenever you’d like. The QuickTime format is also good for uploading to blogs (as many popular blogging Web sites support that format). The QuickTime player and the iTunes software are always available for free on www.apple.com.
There you have it! You can now get your favorite YouTube videos off the Internet to carry with you wherever you go and with any browser you choose. Enjoy!
~ Brandon Freund
