# Downloading YouTube videos



## Gilliangirl (Feb 26, 2006)

I used to be able to download YouTube videos but I tried today to download a few and can no longer do it. I kept getting an error message saying 'Internet Explorer cannot locate the site', which is ridiculous. Anyone have any ideas on this? I wonder if YouTube has introduced something to prevent people from downloading?


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## devnulljp (Mar 18, 2008)

Use firefox - there are a bunch of downloader plugins.
Or you can usually grab them from the cache.
Or if all else fails, there are various (slightly convoluted and complicated) ways to redirect to disk...


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## bobb (Jan 4, 2007)

http://vixy.net/


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## Gilliangirl (Feb 26, 2006)

I was using a program called VideoDL beta and a flash player, but for whatever reason, it's no longer working. Thanks for the responses Devnulljp and Bobb. Will check into those. :smile:


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## Ti-Ron (Mar 21, 2007)

I don't know if it can be helpful but I found a site where you can convert youtube video into mp3 track! Really helful when you find a video of a live performance thant souds really great! Here's the link:

http://www.vidtomp3.com/


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## drak10687 (May 24, 2007)

Well, there is a way if you read the actual code of he page that has the video to find the adress where it is stored, or you can just use this site, for youtube and many other video hosting sites, which will give it to you without any hassle:

http://keepvid.com/


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## devnulljp (Mar 18, 2008)

drak10687 said:


> Well, there is a way if you read the actual code of he page that has the video to find the adress where it is stored, or you can just use this site, for youtube and many other video hosting sites, which will give it to you without any hassle:
> 
> http://keepvid.com/


Often it's generated on the fly so you can't just scan through the code on the page to find the file or compiled into a swf player or something.
You need to do packet sniffing with tshark or something to ID the actual stream you want -- look through the GET requests for get_video?video_id=xxxxxxxxxx follow that tcp stream and find the location and wget it to disk.

Or you could just try this

I find the easiest way is to just grab the Konqueror Flashxxxx files out of /tmp though


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

If you use Firefox, this add-on works:

Video DownloadHelper 3.0.3


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## GTmaker (Apr 24, 2006)

Chito said:


> If you use Firefox, this add-on works:
> 
> Video DownloadHelper 3.0.3


VideoDownloadHelper works great BUT you'll need something like
VLC media player ( its free) to play the video after the download.

One addon + one video player = Happy camper....works for me.


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## devnulljp (Mar 18, 2008)

GTmaker said:


> VideoDownloadHelper works great BUT you'll need something like
> VLC media player ( its free) to play the video after the download.
> 
> One addon + one video player = Happy camper....works for me.


mencoder will convert those flv to avi
I have a very simple little bash script that will do it...if you're on some form of *nix or a Mac.


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Hey folks.

YouTube has always maintained a "no download" policy. The reason why your favorite downloaders stop working is because youtube is always working actively to foil downloading.

Usually stand alone programs update to counter youtubes counteractions. An update and bobs your uncle. Most of the FireFox extensions I have tried don't work :/ and I don't like having to throw flv files through http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg myself I tend to mess the settings up every time (not to mention ffmpeg tends to noT recognize its own codecs on my computer for some odd reason).

The online sites seem to be ok, but they do also tend to crash a fair bit.

And so far, I have not found a downloader that will download videos that don't auto-play when the page loads.


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## WarrenG (Feb 3, 2006)

You know, if you get Safari browser for Windows (I assume you're using Windows) then you just load the page as normal.

Then go Window > Activity > double-click and download the largest file you see in the activity report. It will be called "get_video". Add FLV as the file extension and bingo! Back in business.


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## devnulljp (Mar 18, 2008)

keeperofthegood said:


> Hey folks.
> ...I don't like having to throw flv files through http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg myself I tend to mess the settings up every time (not to mention ffmpeg tends to noT recognize its own codecs on my computer for some odd reason).


If you're using bash, try this: just give it a codec for the output (-divx or -xvid). 



```
[FONT="Courier New"]#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 {-divx|-xvid} list_of_flv_files"
  exit 1
fi

# video encoding bit rate
V_BITRATE=1000

while [ "$1" ]; do
  case "$1" in
    -divx)
      MENC_OPTS="-ovc lavc -lavcopts \
        vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=$V_BITRATE:mbd=2:v4mv:autoaspect"
      ;;
    -xvid)
      MENC_OPTS="-ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=$V_BITRATE:autoaspect"
      ;;
    *)
      if file "$1" | grep -q "Macromedia Flash Video"; then
        mencoder "$1" $MENC_OPTS -vf pp=lb -oac mp3lame \
          -lameopts fast:preset=standard -o \
          "`basename $1 .flv`.avi"
      else
        echo "$1 is not Flash Video. Skipping"
      fi
      ;;
  esac
  shift
done
[/FONT]
```


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## kous (Apr 12, 2007)

If you have real player on your computer, you will get a small "download this video" button above the video. You can view the downloaded video on real player. Its really simple.


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## devnulljp (Mar 18, 2008)

kous said:


> Its really simple.


And where's the fun in that?:smile:


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## drak10687 (May 24, 2007)

also, if you don't feel like converting all your FLVs into AVIs or w/e, then you can download this codec pack for windows media player:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_Mega_Codec_Pack.htm

it works best with windows media classic (which is good IMHO because it loads faster and there is no BS) but it will endable you to play many of its supported file types in the newer versions of WMP as well. Oh, and besides FLV files, you will be able to play pretty much any other type of file, including Quicktime and RealPlayer, so you wont have to deal with multiple programs and their annoying updates.


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