Ways to download videos from Youtube and other video streaming sites

There are lot of tools available to do the job mentioned above. You can use softwares, websites or addons to get the video. I would like to mention a few things to make it easier.


Softwares: Youtube Downloader or Vdownloader are some famous softwares that would help you download streaming videos. There are many other softwares, but I prefer not to use one.

Websites: Keepvid is a good website where you would paste the Youtube URL and you can choose between the mp4 or the flv format of the video to download.

You can also try this:


Prefix the youtube url with the word 'kick'
For example, this www.youtube.com/(something)
becomes, www.kickyoutube.com/(something)

and it'll take you to a page where you can download the video in several different formats like 3gp, mp4, avi, flv, etc.

The options are good, but it works only for Youtube.

Addons: Video DownloadHelper is what I would recommend to download videos from any video sharing site (I assume you're a Firefox user). It's a great addon with lot of options like 'quick download' and 'download and convert', to name a few.

Sites and softwares constrain to only some video streaming sites, not all. So there is still a traditional method of pulling out the videos from cache of your browser.

Windows users:

Goto C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(something).default\Cache

You can sort the files in the Cache directory in the order of 'Date Modified' or 'Size' to get the video on top. Identify the video and rename it to (something).flv

Linux users:

It's a cakewalk. Allow the video to buffer and goto /tmp directory. You'll find the video there, with the thumbnail image (if the codecs are installed)