Tip #3588 - Video Downloader
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Video
Downloader
Suddenly, everywhere
you look on the Internet, there are videos. Don't you agree? Whether it's
YouTube, MySpace or countless other Web sites, videos are everywhere!
It's so common these days for videos to be embedded in Web pages all over
the Internet. Now, many a times, you probably see some cool videos and
I'm guessing that you wish you could download them onto your computer,
but (sigh!) the content providers do not give the users any option to
do so.
And along with that,
even if you are able to download the videos, you won’t be able to
play them with your Windows Media Player or Real Player, because the smart
content providers usually encode their videos in special formats that
do not allow playback on mainstream media players. Well, after today,
you won't have to worry about any of those things. I'm going to show you
all how to beat the content providers at their own game. You will learn
how to download videos and convert them to a format that will be playable
on your favorite media player. If that sounds good, come along with me!
First, for this, you
need to use the Firefox browser. And, as I always keep telling you, it’s
an awesome browser and not just for the purpose of this tutorial!
Secondly, you'll
need to install a Firefox extension that will let you download videos
from different video Web sites. The extension is called Video
Downloader and once you install it, just restart Firefox and
it’ll be ready to go.
To install the Video
Downloader, just click on this link
and click the Install Now button.
Once you've got that
done, you'll want to test it out by downloading a video. For my example,
I'm going to use one from YouTube. So, after we eventually download our
YouTube video, we'll want to convert it to a format in which our media
player will play. So, for that purpose, we are going to use a conversion
software. My choice here would be Media Coder. It’s a relatively
popular video converter and it works flawlessly. You can read more about
it, download and install it right here.
Now, let’s go
to the YouTube video that you want to download. Once you restart Firefox
and after installing the extension, you will see a little icon in the
status bar at the bottom of your desktop screen.
Click on that icon
and a new window will pop up. From there, you will see a button that says
"Download Link." Click on that and you will
be prompted to save the file. Now, remember, the file you are downloading
won’t have a name or an extension, so make sure to fill in a name
and use .flv as the extension type, while you are downloading
the file. .FLV is the default video extension used by most video sites.
You can also rename the file after you have downloaded it, so just remember
the folder where you have placed it.
Now that we have the
file, all that's left for us to do is convert it to a video format that
we can play in Windows Media Player or Winamp. So, go ahead and fire up
the Media Coder. Click on the I Agree button for the
licence agreement and then click on the Skip Setup Wizard
button.
Drag and drop the
.flv files that you downloaded from YouTube (or other sites) onto the
Media Coder window. Click on the Video tab in the lower
left hand section and select X-vid in the format drop
down menu.
The last step is
to click on the Start button on the top toolbar window
to begin the encoding process. The time taken to encode your video is
proportional to the size of the video file you have downloaded. When the
encoding is completed, you will be prompted by a pop up window. Go to
the location of your downloaded file and you will see a new .AVI file
waiting for you. You can now play this file in your favorite media player,
as long as it supports the .AVI format.
Now, this might seem
like a long process, but after you use it a couple of times, it will run
as smooth as butter on hot toast! There's no need to keep track of the
links to your favorite YouTube videos now. You can simply download them
to your computer. Is that cool or what?! Go ahead and give this is a spin,
but do remember, you should not download, copy or distribute videos that
are copyrighted by somebody else. Happy video watching, everyone!
~ Yogesh Bakshi
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