Save a YouTube video
Mac Tip #386, 27 May 2009
You don’t have to be connected to the Internet to view a YouTube video — if you download it first. Here’s how to download a YouTube video.
How this Tip came about
I became quite caught up with the last few shows on American Idol 2009. I heard Adam Lambert sing Ring of Fire and was hooked. I found him a very versatile and exceptional performer.
In fact, I enjoyed his performances so much I followed the link to buy his songs on iTunes. But there’s a huge problem with that: they aren’t available in the New Zealand iTunes Store.
So, I did the next best thing: I downloaded his performances from the American Idol website so I can listen again when I want to. And if they ever do allow me to pay for them, I will.
I used the same process to download those songs as to download a YouTube video — it’s not as obvious as it seems.
How to save a YouTube video
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- In a web browser, load the YouTube video you want to download.
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- The video listed in the Activity window in Safari.
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- The video listed in the Downloads window in Safari.
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- The downloaded video plays in VLC media player.
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- Queen Rania YouTube Channel.
Here’s how to save a YouTube video if you’re using Safari. If you use other web browsers, the process is the same, but you may have to look around in the menus to find the right items.
- View the YouTube video you wish to download and save.
- Open Safari’s Activity window (from the Window menu).
- In the Activity window click the disclosure triangle beside the correct Safari Tab or Window. A list appears showing all the activity for that Tab. In my screenshot you can see a long list of items that are part of the Queen Rania YouTube page I have open. Beside each item is a size in Kb or Mb.
- Identify the biggest item — it’s likely to be several megabytes. In my screenshot it’s a 3.4Mb item at the top of the list.
- Watch that item as the size may be constantly increasing. If it is that means the video is still loading.
- Wait until the size of the biggest item stops increasing then hold down the Option key (⌥) and double click on that line. The movie file downloads to your Downloads folder. It may be named something like
video.flv.
Play the video in VLC
You should now be able to play that video file using the free VLC Media Player.
By the way, the video I loaded for my screenshots was by Queen Rania of Jordan. She is an extremely intelligent and beautiful world leader who is using YouTube, Twitter and other channels to bring about change in the world.
Her themes are around education, eradicating poverty, and encouraging understanding.
This particular video is a humorous response to an award she won.
I recommend Queen Rania’s YouTube Channel
Visit Queen Rania’s official YouTube Channel to experiment with the download technique I’ve explained here.
Coming up soon: how to get the sound out of a downloaded video and into iTunes.
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* 13 comments… read them below and tell us what you think.
I found this page by googling help to get some Adam Lambert videos too! I didn’t even use Adam Lambert as the keywords, ha… Anyways, so you do the same thing as the saving a YouTube video when you want to download his video performance off the American Idol site?
Awesomesauce: yup. :-)
By the way, once you download a video[not through the iTunes store], how can you get into your iTunes?
Awesomesauce: iTunes probably won’t play the .flv file. You may need to convert the file to another movie format. I’m sure Google will give you lots of possibilities if you search on something like ‘convert .flv to .mp4′.
Superb… simplest and easiest way to download files…
Wish that iTunes gives this support or You Tubes give this option at their site in near future…
THanx..!! that was most useful…
Great idea but this is a whole lot simpler than it seems. Just double click while holding down on the apple (command) and it is instantly in the download folder. Don’t need to download again. You’re welcome.
Thanks for the comment Flightmaster, but I’m confused.
If I Command double-click the movie itself it goes fullscreen. If I Command double-click the listing in the Activity window then it does the same thing as Option double-clicking – as I describe in my Tip.
Can you explain exactly what you’re suggesting people should click on?
Why does everytime i click on the line on the activity page
i just goes to another window?
it doesn’t download
It depends which line you click. You need to identify the line for the video, then hold down the Option key while you double click.
The same thing has happened to me more recently. It’s obviously a way of them trying to prevent you from saving the video. And I know I have identified the right line. However, I just discovered that you can outsmart this by doing the following:
In the activity window highlight the line that corresponds with the video and push option-c to copy.
Then open the downloads window and push option-v to paste and the download should start right away.
Miraz, the best app I’ve found on Mac and PC for this is Tooble….
http://tooble.tv/
Even the free version converts a YouTube link to a format that will play in iTunes (it’ll even move the file there for you or just leave it on your computer) and therefore, it’ll play on your iPhone etc.
Phil
Thanks Phil, I appreciate the handy tip. I’ll try it next time I need to grab a YouTube video.
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