How to download videos from Youtube, Dailymotion,et cetera

Some of my friends have been asking me for posts on a few things, like how to save flash videos(youtube, etc.) and play them, and also on how to embed sounds, or other things in googlepages. So, here's the first one...


Step 1 : Get the video

If the site does not seem to allow saving, You can get the video by using a website like http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/ or, just wait for the video to load (all of it), then go to your Temporary Internet Files folder, and copy the file to another folder.

For Firefox users:
Just open firefox, and type in about:cache?device=disk as the URL. The folder used for Temporary internet files will be displayed, as well, as the various files and their details. Just search for the URL of the video, and then open the folder and copy the file by seeing the file size. Arranging the icons according to size is usually a good idea.

For IE users :
In many computers, the Temporary Internet files folder is hidden, so to view it, you'll have to change your view. To do this, just open any folder, and go to:
Tools > Folder Options > View (the second tab)

Here, change the following :
A) In Hidden files and Folders, select Show hidden files and folders
B) Uncheck the box saying Hide protected operating system files

Now go to
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USERNAME\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
And copy the file to your chosen folder.

If you have trouble finding the file, there are three common ways of identifying it-
A) Right click, and arrange icons by size - your videos will be larger than most other files.
B) Arrange by Modified - if your video was the last thing you loaded, then your video will be the large file at the end of the file list.
C) The name of the file will often begin or end with the name it has on the URL, so,
www.blahblah.com/videonum=drw43rfsf will often have the name drw43rfsf.

Step 2 : Get a player or codec

There are many ways of playing these files, but the three most common ways are to use a flash video player, or to install a codec, so it plays in Windows Media Player, or to use another player like VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/).

There are plenty of flash video players available, however, it is often difficult to know which ones are safe to use, so be sure to scan it before running.

As for codecs, the one I use is FFDshow (I actually installed something called PlayFLV, which required FFDshow to play most new files). This, once installed, allows you to play numerous file types on Windows MediaPlayer.
FFDshow can be found at : http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow

. dot . dot . dot .