HowTo: Download YouTube videos (the easy way)

[FRuMMaGe]

Many people have been asking how to download youtube videos, and kept being pointed to useless software which will do it for them.

Here is the easy way:

Step 1: Find the video you want to download and wait for it to completely finish loading.

Step 2: Minimize your browser (do NOT close it, some browsers delete the temp directory upon closing), and navigate to the directory /tmp

Step 3: Drag the flash file onto your desktop. Voila!

This definitely works with firefox, and probably most other browsers aswell. Enjoy!

[sad_iq]

Here is a simple way also: Find the video you want to download...let's say this one here:http://youtube.com/watch?v=2BCoZiSbGtY
You don't need to watch it or anything...then in the address bar on top of ANY browser put kiss in front of the youtube...so the address will be http://kissyoutube.com/watch?v=2BCoZiSbGtY
That will take you to a page that will give you the preview of the video(like youtube) and a lot of links ...and one of them is Download Now (guess what it does )

[Belinrahs]

There are also a few services I've seen floating around, web-based, that grab the YouTube FLA file, and convert it to MPEG-4.

Google it..

[bashologist]

Cool, that's really neat, didn't know that.

Check out this nice bash script.

#!/bin/bash
flash=$(ls -t /tmp/Flash* | head -n 1)
destination=$(find ~/.mozilla -name sessionstore.js -exec sed 's/.*title:"\([^"]*\).*selected.*/\1/' {} \;)
echo "waiting for download to finish ..."
size=$(du $flash)
while sleep 5s; do
	if [ "$size" != "$(du $flash)" ]; then
		size=$(du $flash)
		continue
	else
		break
	fi
done
cp "$flash" "$HOME/${destination////%2f}.swf"

Load a YouTube web page, wait a few seconds, run it, then look in your home directory. n_n

[capink]

Another approach is to install firefox extension unplug. This extension will give you download link to the youtube videos.

[FRuMMaGe]

Originally Posted by Belinrahs There are also a few services I've seen floating around, web-based, that grab the YouTube FLA file, and convert it to MPEG-4. Google it..

These usuall take ages though.

I'm assuming people can convert the videos themselves if they see it necessary.

Personally, I use WinFF to convert all my videos. You can also use to it convert to iPod format

[qpieus]

Originally Posted by bashologist Cool, that's really neat, didn't know that. Check out this nice bash script. #!/bin/bash flash=$(ls -t /tmp/Flash* | head -n 1) destination=$(find ~/.mozilla -name sessionstore.js -exec sed 's/.*title:"\([^"]*\).*selected.*/\1/' {} \;) echo "waiting for download to finish ..." size=$(du $flash) while sleep 5s; do if [ "$size" != "$(du $flash)" ]; then size=$(du $flash) continue else break fi done cp "$flash" "$HOME/${destination////%2f}.swf" Load a YouTube web page, wait a few seconds, run it, then look in your home directory. n_n

That's brilliant, thanks. I've been wanting to save a few youtube videos and this worked perfectly.

[Kopfgeldjaeger]

Have a look at http://code.google.com/p/vdown/ , too, it has a little GTK-GUI and downloads from many video portals (all supported by videograb.de), it saves the files with the original name of the video. You can also download video lists with it.

greetings

[metroplex]

I'd suggest installing the package "youtube-dl" available from the unverse repo. From a terminal:

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

Using the download-script is easy. Start a terminal, and type:

youtube-dl <link to youtube video>

[Steve1961]

There's also a firefox extension called download helper:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006