Download Youtube Videos (and Google video)

Maybe this is obvious, but it was new to me. :)

Today I skimmed through the jroller.com homepage and found an article on Valerio Schiavoni's blog about revision control systems. He embedded a link to a video on YouTube showing Linus Torvalds giving a speech at Google about git and why he thinks it's better than other revision/software control systems.

When I started to watch I realized I would not have time to watch it to the end. So I wanted to save it locally and watch it later, without having to be online again. So I googled for "download youtube videos" and the first three matches all pointed to one sort or other of special download tools.

Turns out you do not really need anything like that. By chance I found the completely downloaded video file in the /tmp directory named something like FlashRItWZO. I tried some video on Google video, too, works fine as well. The files all start with "Flash" and are then followed by some random part.

You just have to wait until the whole video is buffered. You can then copy the file from the /tmp directory to some more permanent location. On Linux mplayer happily plays them.

One caveat needs to be remembered however: If you want the whole video you must not seek through it while it is still streaming. Otherwise you will end up with just the parts you saw/that were buffered. On the other hand you can of course use this to only store a part of a longer video, in case you do not need the whole thing.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi,

i ran into the same problem when I saw Google Developer Day session in Youtube.

I found a tool (windows) that can convert them on the fly (ok, it takes some conversion time) and stores it in a ipod compatible format.

http://adminsight.de/2007/06/19/youtube-to-ipod/
Thu Jun 21, 02:08:00 PM GMT+2
MoAja said…
i use mozilla firefox and downloadhelper addons to download video from youtube, veoh, dailymotion, metacafe, its perfectly save, no adware and spyware that could harm your computer and it proves to be the faster beside other website youtube downloader try this tutorial:
http://helpmyinternet.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-to-download-video-from-youtube.html
Tue Oct 09, 09:06:00 AM GMT+2
aribo said…
Thats great, but I think its still a lot of work and you can't leave the youtube page till it is completly loaded. I use a website called YouTubeLoader and you just past your link and you can download it. Also for the firefox user here they have some crazy plugin who add a download link under every YouTube video. You can read here How to install the YouTube Downloader here
Tue Jan 29, 11:04:00 PM GMT+1
Anonymous said…
u can download youtube videos and some other sites video with this site :

http://www.top-tub.com

..
Fri Mar 28, 03:36:00 PM GMT+1
Anonymous said…
You can also download youube videos here: http://www.informkey.com/youtubevideokeep.php
Sun Apr 20, 10:47:00 AM GMT+2
nvh said…
Here is my firefox extension for downloading videos from almost any video-sharing site:
NetVideoHunter downloader
Video converting is in my plans, but first i need test the current release. Try out, and give your feedback!
Thu May 29, 01:09:00 AM GMT+2
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