Downloading and Playing YouTube Videos on Your PC > Tools for Downloading YouTube Videos

InformIT: Downloading and Playing YouTube Videos on Your PC > Tools for Downloading YouTube Videos

Tools for Downloading YouTube Videos
Several websites let you do what YouTube doesn’t—save YouTube videos to your computer’s hard drive. And after you’ve saved a YouTube video, you can watch it anytime you want, even if you’re not connected to the Internet.
The easiest way to save your YouTube videos is to use a video downloader site designed just for that purpose. These sites take the Flash video from the YouTube site and save it to your PC’s hard drive. Once it’s on your hard drive, you can view it at any time.
To use one of these sites, go to the YouTube site, open the desired video viewing page, and then copy the URL for this page. Now go to the video downloader site and paste that URL into the appropriate box. Click the Download button, and the site will download the selected video to your disk, saving it in the .FLV format. (If prompted, you’ll need to give the downloaded file a .FLV extension.)
Some of the more popular YouTube downloader sites include the following:
dlThis.com Video Grabber
FeelingTea
GooTube FLV Retriever
KeepVid
KissYouTube
Ripzor YouTube Video Ripper
SaveTube
SaveYouTube.com
TechCrunch YouTube Video Download Tool
VideoDL
VideoDownloader
YouTube Downloader
YouTubeX.com
YouTubia
All of these sites are completely free to use, and will download and save any YouTube video (and, in some cases, videos from other streaming video sites).
In addition, if you use the Internet Explorer web browser, you can use the FlvGetter plug-in to download FLV-format videos from within the browser. If you use Mozilla Firefox instead, similar FLV downloading plug-ins for your browser include UnPlug and VideoDownloader.

Playing YouTube Videos with a Flash Video Player
Once you’ve downloaded a YouTube video file, how do you play it? Simple—you use a video player program that can play back .FLV format files. Not all video players support the .FLV format, however. You’ll need to use one of the following:
Flash Guru Flash Video Player
Flash Video Player
FLVPlayer
Riva FLV Player
Wimpy Standalone FLV Player
All of these video players work in much the same fashion. Launch the player, open the file for the video you want to view, and then click the Play button. Use the player’s transport controls to pause, stop, rewind, and fast-forward the video.
Downloading and Playing YouTube Videos with RealPlayer
There’s a new way to download, save, and play YouTube videos—and it’s an all-in-one solution. The latest version of RealPlayer, currently in beta testing, enables one-button downloading of any video from the YouTube site, and also functions as a player for .FLV-format videos (among others).
When you install the new RealPlayer, you also install a special add-in for Internet Explorer. This add-in automatically displays a Download This Video button above the top right corner of any video you view on the YouTube site. (It displays the same button on any video streaming site, so you can download videos from any website that offers streaming videos, such as CNN.com or ESPN.) To display the Download This Video button, simply hover your cursor over the video you want to download; the button should appear automatically.
Note that you don’t have to have the RealPlayer program running to display the Download This Video button in your web browser. The button is an add-in program that launches automatically whenever you launch your web browser.
To download a video, just click the Download This Video button. RealPlayer displays the Download & Recording Manager window and automatically saves the video to your hard drive. You don’t have to do anything; the file is automatically named and saved.
To play back a saved video, launch the RealPlayer program and select the My Library tab. The videos you’ve downloaded in this fashion should be listed here; double-click a video to start playback. If you’ve downloaded a video using another download website, select File, Open to locate the file on your hard drive, and then load the video for playback.
Playback takes place within the RealPlayer window, at whatever size the window appears. To view the video full-screen, click the Full-Screen Theater button; to view the video at its original size, regardless of how big the RealPlayer window is, click the 1X button. You can use RealPlayer’s transport controls to pause, stop, rewind, and fast-forward the video; you can even play back in slow motion, by clicking Pause and then using the Slow Reverse and Slow Forward buttons.
All in all, the new RealPlayer is an elegant solution for downloading and playing YouTube and other streaming videos. And the best thing is, it’s totally free—which means it’s worth your consideration.