How do I download a YouTube video?

Question

For a school project I need to download three youtube videos and save them to a CD. I am running Ubuntu 10.10; can anybody provide instructions on how to do this? I'm fairly new to Ubuntu so the more detail the better.

Answer 1

For Firefox Users:

You can install Video DownloadHelper addon on firefox and download any embedded object including Youtube videos.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/

Answer 2

There is this greasemonkey script on userscripts.org. But I cannot vouch for it. Nor I can assert the security of such a script.

But it seems to work.

You will need to install greasemonkey

Answer 3

No need for plugins, this is simple and a excellent solution:

http://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/

Answer 4

Why did no one mention Minitube ?

Minitube is a YouTube desktop application. With it you can watch YouTube videos in a new way: you type a keyword, Minitube gives you an endless video stream. Minitube is not about cloning the original YouTube web interface, it aims to create a new TV-like experience.

It does not require the Flash Player. From this application you can watch and download videos.

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Answer 5

Add pwn in front of the youtube link to get options to download, eg. File2HD works well for me

Answer 6

1. Copy the URL of the Youtube video that Ur watching
2. Open a New Tab, Hit www.keepvid.com
3. U'll find a Text Box at the top of the page, Paste the URL that you have copied into the box and click on Download
4. Run the Java Applet when prompted (You have to have Java Installed on the system or else this won't work)
5. Once done, you'll have various formats and qualities of the video, Right click on the one U find most suited and click Save Link As and save it.

Answer 7

If you open libflashplayer.so with an hex editor (like ghex2), and change the first occurence of unlink with rename, temporary flash files get persistent in /tmp.

Answer 8

There are so many ways of downloading YouTube videos.

Application:

Personally I have used MiniTube as my application of choice for getting videos from YouTube. It's a real simple approach. Find the video by keyword, then download it.

Command Line:

If you feel comfortable with the command line interface (or CLI as it is known) through your terminal application, try the youtube-dl command line approach.

Websites:

Websites like MediaConvertor or Vixy Freecoder can do this without the need of installing extensions for Firefox or Chrome/Chromium or native applications.

These 2 websites allows you to download in different formats. Both audio and Video formats. You plug in the link to the video on their site and wait for the conversion to complete and then you get the link for the download.

The bonus to the sites is that they are cross-platform much like the extensions approach. But if you want to free your browser from the clutter of extra things, then try the sites or the other suggestions others have mentioned.

Answer 9

Run

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

to install command line mode downloader for YouTube.


Then run

youtube-dl YouTube-video-link

so it will download the video.

Answer 10

I found something that is recent. Just get a Firefox addon for downloading Youtube video's. Firefox addons for downloading Youtube video's

If you use Chrome/Chromium on Ubuntu, here are some addons for them: [Chrome/Chromium addons for downloading Youtube Video's][3]

[3]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/Youtube%20downloader?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon here is the tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqDqrE_v6pE

Answer 11

use gmediafinder, I'm using it for a while and it's awesome.

Answer 12

clive

We are able to download free content from YouTube or other streaming sites with this easy to use command line tool.

clive is a command line video extraction utility for Youtube and other similar video-sharing websites. It was written to work around the Adobe Flash plugin requirement as the technology is poorly supported on Unix-like systems. ^{from manpage}

To downlaod a video from a given location (on You Tube press the "Share" button to get the URL to a video). Copy this link and issue clive from a terminal with e.g. the following command:

clive -f best http://youtu.be/D6z6hn6wZlg

There are plenty of other options to control download behaviour including options to choose the download format that are all nicely documented in the manpage.

Answer 13

For Google-chrome Users:

I would use this Chrome/ium extension

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UPDATE:
As the the other one doesn't work anymore i have updated this answer:

This is a new extension and it is not on the Chrome Web Store

You can download the extension here.

Here's a step by step on how to install extensions from other sites than Chrome Web Store:

1. Download the extension file from the website and save it to your computer.
2. Click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar.
3. Select Tools > Extensions.
4. Locate the extension file on your computer and drag the file onto the Extensions page.
5. Review the list of permissions in the dialog that appears. If you would like to proceed, click Install.

Source: Google Support

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For Firefox Users:

And for Firefox users, you can get this extension: Download YouTube Videos as MP4, not as many options as the chrome one but has MP4 and FLV formats and supports HD for HD videos

Answer 14

You could also try using Clipgrab it can download videos from youtube via the clipboard, or you can search via the application for videos. The PPA here You can use these commands

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:clipgrab-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install clipgrab

Answer 15

For Firefox Users:

As my answer to that question is probably more valid here, I'll present it here for convenience.

You can use flashgot, which is an addon for firefox that I have found extremely useful for downloading videos from Youtube and other sites. (You still require the flash-plugin in your browser, however, for the video to be detected by flashgot.)

• Install flashgot from the official Mozilla addons site and restart firefox. Make sure that the addon is enabled; check by going to tools > addons > extensions. From the flashgot entry in the extensions tab you can also set a number of preferences.

• Navigate to your Youtube video and set the quality in the youtube video settings and start the video playing for a few seconds and then pause it.

• Right click in the Youtube page and select flashgot media; there probably will be more than one video; either simply download them both or choose the larger file size (which will be the higher quality video). You can either use your browser's download manager or another program set via the flashgot options.

Answer 16

For Firefox Users:

To download YouTube Videos with Firefox, simply visit the following site to download the extension that works with Firefox.:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-youtube/

Answer 17

Solved with a small shell script :

#!/bin/bash
#
# grabflash
#
# Finds any cached Flash videos in the kernel file handles list
# and copies them to the user Videos folder ; this gets around
# the new Flash players habit of opening a cache file in /tmp
# and immediately deleting it.
# 
# Usage : play the video until it's all cached. Run script.
#         video will be copied to ~/Videos folder as FLV
#

for I in $(pgrep -f libflashplayer.so)
    do ls -l /proc/$I/fd/* | \
    grep '/tmp/Flash' | \
    grep -o "/proc/$I/fd/\\S*" | \
    xargs --no-run-if-empty cp -t ~/Videos/
done

Answer 18

You can also use RealPlayer. I didn't see it mentioned yet. You're able to download in both mp4 or flv format. It's a free download and a one click install.

Answer 19

I know it is answered, but I'm shocked that none explicitly mentioned Bytubed. Its simple the best to me when it comes to you-tube download. Just do install it and then go to Firefox's tools->Bytubed

Only downside is it works with FF only but to me its not downside since I use FF for all my browsing...

Answer 20

I think that the simplest way to download a video from youtube, without installing any plugin or sofware, is with savefrom.net. and here is the video demonstrating How to download youtube videos using the ss trick Lets say you want to download the below video

On your address bar add ss behind youtube.com and hit Enter ↵

Now you will be redirected to savefrom.net. On your right, click on the video quality you want to download.

Answer 21

There is an Add-On in both Firefox and Google-chrome

named as Easy Youtube Downloader.

for Firefox

for G-Chrome

Answer 22

4kdownloader! other than downloading videos from url, it can also download entire playlists, and also convert them to mp3 or other formats if required.

http://www.4kdownload.com/

I am using it for long time, it's simple and easy to use, and has GUI interface for ubuntu.