Techie Blogger

If you are using a linux based operating system like Ubuntu, literally downloading the youtube videos is as easy as just watching it. I mean it when I said it. Anyway here I explain the best and the easiest options I found in downloading the youtube videos.

1.Just Watch the video.
One thing you would have rarely noticed is that when a video is buffered completely in Youtube, a copy of that video is saved in /tmp directory. So after watching the video make sure the you do not close or change the page in the browser. After the video is streamed fully in the browser just move to the /tmp directory and you can find a .flv file with name beginning with Flash*. Just copy that file into your desktop and it’s done. This is not the case with just youtube videos but any flash videos on net can be downloaded this way.

2.Command Line way.
If are comfortable with using command line, this way is for you. Youtube-dl is a Python script, which  can run under Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows platforms as long a latest version of python is installed. For installing the script in Ubuntu just type

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

Now for downloading a youtube video, in the terminal type

youtube-dl **video page url***

There are also a number of options available for you with this python script. You can view this by typing

youtube-dl –help

Options:
-h, –help            print this help text and exit
-v, –version         print program version and exit
-u USERNAME, –username=USERNAME
account username
-p PASSWORD, –password=PASSWORD
account password
-o FILE, –output=FILE
output video file name
-q, –quiet           activates quiet mode
-s, –simulate        do not download video
-t, –title           use title in file name
-l, –literal         use literal title in file name
-n, –netrc           use .netrc authentication data
-g, –get-url         print final video URL only
-2, –title-too       used with -g, print title too
-f FORMAT, –format=FORMAT
append &fmt=FORMAT to the URL
-b, –best-quality    alias for -f 18

3. Grabber websites.
There are many websites like keepvid.com which allow users to download the youtube video by entering the url. But in many cases I have found this way do not work well.

4.Firefox plugins
If you are a Mozilla Firefox user there are a number of plugins which automatically detect any flash videos being played in the page. It need not be a ‘you’ tube page. This supports most of the other favourite websites. The below are just a few to name.

1-Click YouTube Video Download

Download Flash and Video

Flash Video Downloader

Fast YouTube Download

This is way I personally follow

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Author is a novice blogger from Kerala. He likes to blog about the techie-st things happening around in the web. He is also an Open Source enthusiast and a Linux User.