Saving YouTube videos

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Is there an easy way to save a U tube video as a file for future access, apart from saving a link which is not permanent. I use Windows 7.

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Use YouTube Downloader. It’s free, gets updated fairly regularly. Just watch the installation process carefully, to avoid undesired toolbars.

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Thanks. I have installed the program but each time I triy to copy a You Tube video it fails. I normally use Chrome browser but tried it in Explorer 9 as recommended but with the same result. I use MSE and Win 7 firewall so those should not be a problem. Th “download” button in the program is in the section marked PRO but i presume that is not relevant. I have tried several videos. Can you help please

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Odd your having issue’s. I use this with no problems. Did you download the PRO version or the Basic one? You don’t need the PRO version. Just make a folder somewhere that the program can download to, paste the url and hit download. Here’s the Basic version. http://www.youtubedownloadersite.com/

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As James wrote, you don’t need the Pro version. The basic is enough and it has no pro section. Uninstall the Pro and download the Basic version. To use it, just copy any video URL and paste it into the app and click download. Can’t get simpler than that (actually it cans, as the app detects when you copied an URL and adds it immediately :)).

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It is the free version I have installed. I have attached a couple of screen shots showing what happened.

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What error messages, if any, do you get? Want to post one of the video links, so that it can be tested as well?

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Both the error message “status failed” and the video link are shown on the attachments. I tried several You Tube videos, all with the same result. I used the texting whilst driving video from the last Windows Secrets, using the url at the top of the page and the url obtained by right clicking on the video itseldf. I also tried other videos, with the same result. The following links are to the WS video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HbjSWDwJILs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HbjSWDwJILs

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It doesn’t seem to be a problem with the videos. See if the info here is of any help.

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I have tried again using Windows Explorer 9 as the browser but without success so I uninstalled YTD and re-installed, using an uninstaller that removes every bit from the registry, but the result was the same. None of the other suggestions are applicable as I use MSE and the Win 7 firewall. I will give up on the desktop and try on my wife’s laptop – when I can get to use it. Thanks for all the help.

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It’s very weird, as I have used it here for a few years in different OSes, without ever an issue. Sorry about that :(.

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Is there an easy way to save a U tube video as a file for future access, apart from saving a link which is not permanent.

Why is a link not permanent? :confused:

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I have been successfully using the RealPlayer addon “RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin 15.0.3” with Firefox, to save YouTube video clips.

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Why is a link not permanent? :confused:

I don’t know about YouTube, but some web sites actually do change the exact URLs of content from time to time. I don’t know why, but this anomaly has given rise to a cottage industry of PermaLink URLs. Blog entries have been among the most frequent URLs for which PermaLink URLs are substituted for long-term bookmarking. See this article about what a Permalink is, and when it is used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permalink . YouTube may archive older videos — I am just guessing.

As for the original question, I assume that Flash Player has been updated to the current version, right? And not a Beta version?

There is a note after each failed download, which consists of the number 3 . This occurs when YTD is not establishing an Internet Connection. According to THIS THREAD , this can occur when Windows Media Player (WMP) is Working Offline. “In the [WMP] File Menu, uncheck Work Offline. Worked for me…”

Otherwise, MSE could be interfering with YTD, although I have seen no reports that this is a widespread issue. If MSE has been upgraded to MSE 4, maybe there’s a new issue not previously reported?

BTW, there are reports of bundled spyware or browser toolbars included with the YTD free installer. Be advised that some users have reported that the “opt-out” options are not being honored with the most recent version of the installer, unless the older version is completely removed (as with Revo Uninstaller) before installing the newer version.

If these browser modifications have installed themselves, these could be detected as malicious, and the entire program could be denied Internet Access through all affected browsers. Then, the solution would be to uninstall YTD, run Malwarebytes, clean your Registry, and try installing YTD as a fresh install, being careful to opt out from all bundled browser mods. The outward sign of an unwanted browser modification is that you notice a new toolbar, or your search engine has been changed to Yahoo Search or something less familiar.

-- rc primak

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I don’t know about YouTube, but some web sites actually do change the exact URLs of content from time to time. I don’t know why, but this anomaly has given rise to a cottage industry of PermaLink URLs. Blog entries have been among the most frequent URLs for which PermaLink URLs are substituted for long-term bookmarking. See this article about what a Permalink is, and when it is used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permalink . YouTube may archive older videos — I am just guessing.

URLs of YouTube videos never change. If they did then all the many functions provided by YouTube for embedding, emailing or otherwise sharing would not work.

The first video uploaded to YouTube seven years ago still has the same URL which has been linked to many thousands of times; so all of those links still work.

There is also a “Watch Later” button at the bottom of every YouTube video (which only adds to your playlists if you have signed in to a YouTube account).

Bruce

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Internet Download Manager works for me and it has the added bonuses of faster downloads and a resume capability!

http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/

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I’ve just downloaded Wacky Web Week’s “Alegría” OK with Keepvid OK. And this is on Win 98!! YouTube have recently made changes. That’s why I started using Keepvid.

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There’s an even easier way to download that video (Youtube and many others) without installing anything.

Go to SaveVid and enter (you can copy and paste) the URL of the video.

(If the link above doesn’t work for you, go to: http://www.savevid.com/ )

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This is an excellent free Youtube downloader: http://www.youtubedownloaderhd.com/download.html

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This works for me.
http://deturl.com/bookmarklet-to-directly-download-videos-from-youtube.asp
kk

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To save any video that is on the internet I use – Replay Media Catcher, or – Replay Video Capture – which you can obtain from http://www.applian.com

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I have been using Replay Video Capture for a long time. It is a screen capture app so no download or conversion necessary. I have Version 4.2 on an XP Pro maching and Version 5 on a Win 7 Pro. Although I like the older version’s graphical sound bar better, they both produce excellent, and I do mean EXCELLENT, results. Other than Office, it is the most frequently used program on my rigs. Its uses are enormous and well worth the reasonable purchase.

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All You Tube Videos and for that matter, any video or audio files, are automatically saved to your computer, whether you want them or not, provided that you view the entire video or listen to the entire audio on You Tube or any other site.

The default location of the viewed video or heard audio on a Windows XP machine is as follows: ( Windows 7 location may differ. )

C:Documents and Settings( logged on user )Local SettingsTemporary Internet Files

After viewing the video, in Windows Explorer arrange files in the right-hand pane by “Size”. Usually the You Tube video will be one of the larger files. It is also usually in “*.flv” or “*.mp4” format. That has been the most easy way for me. In addition, if you don’t like those formats then there are MANY freeware video converters that will convert the file to the extension of your choice.

The best converter that I have found is the ‘entire suite’ at http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/ which includes a ‘You Tube Download’ function whereby you can choose the extension of your choice. It will automatically convert as it downloads on-the-fly. There is also a ‘You Tube Video to MP3 converter’ that automatically converts the video to audio on-the-fly.

Regards…..

Stubborn Windows XP User

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For those who allow automatic updating of your programs, I happened to notice last week that a Flash player update I allowed to occur finished properly, BUT notified me that I would have to disable my browser’s download videos plugins due to Flash not supporting file downloading properly. The warning suggested that browser and program crashes would result.

If you allowed automatic updating, one of these type issues may be what’s causing your issues. Sadly, major program providers have been almost forcing updates on users without allowing them to know ahead of time that updating that program will likely break many other things. I don’t allow automatic updating, and always double-check anything that wants to be updated and I STILL get caught sometimes no matter how hard I try to research issues ahead of time.

It sounds as if a Flash update silently killed your download vids capabilities.

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I agree with
sdakos
freemake video downloader,freemake video converter,freemake audio converter are very good & easy to use .You can even convert you video file in almost any format and keep then on your hard drive.I even download videos and i keep only the soundtrack (MP3.MP4,WAV,)again you have the choice.
excellent choices,,,You do need :Microsoft .NET Framework v4 To Run The Program

http://www.freemake.com/downloads/

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For those who allow automatic updating of your programs, I happened to notice last week that a Flash player update I allowed to occur finished properly, BUT notified me that I would have to disable my browser’s download videos plugins due to Flash not supporting file downloading properly. The warning suggested that browser and program crashes would result.

If you allowed automatic updating, one of these type issues may be what’s causing your issues. Sadly, major program providers have been almost forcing updates on users without allowing them to know ahead of time that updating that program will likely break many other things. I don’t allow automatic updating, and always double-check anything that wants to be updated and I STILL get caught sometimes no matter how hard I try to research issues ahead of time.

It sounds as if a Flash update silently killed your download vids capabilities.

Just because the browser plug-ins are slower to be updated than Flash Player itself, is no excuse not to update Flash Player as soon as a security patch is issued. Flash remains one of the top three ways computers get infected over the Internet, and Adobe beta tests new Flash Player versions for some time before pushing patches out through automatic updates (unless there’s a critical security issue).

I would look to the browser add-ons writers rather than Flash Player when complaining about the effects of Flash updates on browser add-ons.

-- rc primak

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Freemake Video Converter always works for YouTube and often works for other supported sites.
http://www.freemake.com/

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Freemake Video Converter always works for YouTube and often works for other supported sites.
http://www.freemake.com/

I’ve been testing this one out lately and it does a decent job of downloading most videos, but the format conversion part of this
program tends to leave video and sound out of sync, at least on my system.

There also may be spam associated with downloading and installing this app.

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Internet Download Manager works for me and it has the added bonuses of faster downloads and a resume capability!

http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/

Oh, yeah!… this is the one.
Highly recommend it! Also downloads multiversions of vids at same time. Will download most anything.

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As foe win 7 and utube not working correctly [mike] is not alone, and a matter of fact i have been dealing with this now for about 2 wks myself, and it happens that in 5-16 i was on bing.com/businessportal trying to set up my business and there is a location to upload info to load on Bing and it does not work! And to make matters even worse i was on a chat with bing support using a remote to try to fix the issue and using both IE9 or chrome it will not work, and it issue is a flash issue. Using IE9 the user will always get a flash read error, using chrome the user will get a compile error, so their are some issue going around with flash,utube and it seems a lot of video,music issues at this time. My issue was not fixed and i am waiting on the MS engineers to get back to me, as support could not fix the issue. So it is not just one person.
As for coping a utube video i use [free utube to mp3 converter] and it seems to work great, but at this time the only way ti view them is using chrome, not IE. [:))]

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If you use Firefox, try the addon ‘Download Helper’. It will download videos from many sites including YouTube.
http://www.downloadhelper.net/

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If you use Firefox, try the addon ‘Download Helper’. It will download videos from many sites including YouTube.
http://www.downloadhelper.net/

I second this…works with a simple click FF’s toolbar.

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Another simple way to get YouTube videos without a 3rd party install or a browser add-on would be to pull them from your browser’s cache after viewing them.
This is an OK method if you are only the occasional downloader of video.

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I use Keep Tube (http://www.keep-tube.com) There are web browser add-ons, as well as the ability to paste a link to their web site, for direct download. You have the option to download various quality versions of the file, and they recently added the ability to download the audio track to an .mp3 file.

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Freemake Video Downloader found at http://www.freemake.com/free_video_downloader/ has been
a fabulous performer for me. Give it a try.

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I have just downloaded RealPlayer – no plug-ins – and it works a treat.

many thanks to everyone

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The more extensions, the slower your browser can get. The more programs installed on your computer, the less stable it can become.
So for downloading youtube videos, the easiest way is to go to the youtube page with the video, and in the address bar insert “save” right before “youtube”, like this:
http://www.youtube.com/doodahdoodah
becomes
http://www.saveyoutube.com/doodahdoodah
It’ll give you a choice of formats and resolutions to download. The highest quality might be better than what you would have watched on the youtube page.

Or copy the video URL and go to keepvid.com and paste it there. Keepvid also works on sites other than youtube.

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And some of the free video downloader programs contain spyware. If I downloaded a video downloader, before I installed or ran it I’d go to virustotal.com and upload it to them. They check it with 40-odd malware scanners. Usually takes one or two minutes. Well worth it.

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Here’s my 2 cents worth.

You need Firefox for these:

[*]Download Youtube Videos
[*]Youtube 2 mp3

The first one adds a button below the video called “Download” and can be used to download the complete .flv file. To view it, you need a Flash player installed on your system since Windows Media Player will cough and splutter and tell you it doesn’t support Flash. I recommend the free VLC Player for that which doesn’t need any additional codecs to be installed: http://www.videolan.org/

The second link I posted allows you to extract the audio from any Youtube video and save it as an .mp3 file rather than saving the whole video. You’ll find a button called “Save as MP3” above any Youtube video when you install that add-on.

If you haven’t got Firefox, shame on you…LOL

Firefox is the best browser around and can be configured to suit your own tastes and needs. Here are some Firefox layouts all of which can be enabled by just one click of the mouse.

30965-ff_text_links
Tabs below with text links.

30966-ff_tabs_ontop_text_links
Tabs above with text links.

30967-ff_tabs_on_top
Tabs above without text links.

30968-ff_tabs_below
Tabs below without text links.

In the layout where you see the oblong orange button top left, you can click that to access the menus, or toggle the text links on and off by hitting the ALT key.

You can download Firefox from here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/

If you prefer Firefox in another language, download from this link instead: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html

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zamzar is a good tool to save and convert youtube files

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Sounds to me like YTD is being blocked by Windows firewall.
The following instructions pertain to a system running Win7 x64. Your default installation folder will likely be contained in “program files” on 32-bit systems.
Try this:

Open the windows firewall settings: Start –> Control Panel –> Windows Firewall
In the left-side panel, click the link labeled “Allow a program or feature through windows firewall”
Look for “YTD video downloader” in the list of programs. If the box is un-checked, check it and click OK.
If it is not in the list, you can ensure it isn’t being blocked (as a process-of-elimination troubleshooting step) by clicking the “Allow another program” button.
Once again, look for “YTD video downloader” in the list and select it.
If its not shown in that list either, click the “Browse” button and navigate to YTD’s install folder. The default location is “C:Program Files (x86)GreenTree ApplicationsYTD Video Downloader”.
Select “YTD.exe” and click Ok for each of the hierarchical windows.
If it was being blocked by windows firewall, now it won’t be. Try using YTD now.

If you have internet access in your browser, but some application doesn’t seem to have internet, the culprit is almost always that it is being blocked by a firewall. This is especially true if you have windows firewall set to “never allow exceptions” in which case you will need to set it to allow before you can perform the previous procedure. Interference from other software on the computer can also cause a program to experience network connectivity issues in which case you can try looking through the system event log to try to track down the program responsible for causing the lack of connectivity in YTD (or any other program).

I hope this helps.

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