Eliminate Bandwith Frustration When Downloading Video from YouTube, MetaCafe, Google and Other Sites

Video on the internet is exploding. But to watch it conveniently and without nauseating interruption in delivery, you need to download that video onto your computer.

Friends send you links to their favorite videos on Youtube, Metacafe, Google or a host of other services, but when you start to watch them, they do not play smoothly - or at all!

When was the last time you reserved time to sit down and watch a longer video on the computer only to have trouble connecting? Or it stutters, stammers, stops and starts?

Isn't that frustrating? Makes me want to just give up and forget it.

But wait! Horror of horrors, what if you still use dial-up? (I'm sorry, to be politically correct I suppose I should say "bandwidth challenged"!) There is no way you can watch videos on your computer. Or is there?

Video download makes all of these problems go away. Do not waste any more time with videos that stop and start. Once it is downloaded onto your computer, watch it knowing you can finish it; and you can watch it again and again.

Here is how to download videos to your computer in just 2 easy steps:

Step 1 - Download the file
First, copy the URL or address from the address bar of your browser, then head on over to www.videodownloader.net and paste it into the URL box and click download. There is a long list of website video they support. It can be a busy site but if you retry once or twice, you should get it. Another site is www.keepvid.com, but it is many times unavailable.

Sound simple enough? Want to make it easier yet? You are using Firefox as your internet browser, right?

If so, there is a Firefox video download plugin that puts a little icon in the lower right corner of Firefox that you can click to download the video of the page you are on. Simply follow a link to the video, click the icon and when it prompts you (may be 30 seconds or more), then tell it where to save the video.

Step 2 - Pickup a player
The downloaded video is saved in an ".flv" format (flash video). You need an .flv player to play it. Not a problem.

Download the FREE Riva FLV Encoder 2 or another of your choosing. You will be pleased to find that the Riva player does more than just play .flv's, but for now that's all you need. (See resource section below for links to these programs.)

Install Riva Player, then go get your video downloads from YouTube, Google, MetaCafe or whoever. If you perform the default install of Riva, it will automatically associate Riva Player with .flv files so that if you double click or open an .flv file, Riva will open and play it for you.

Note: Riva Player seems to work well, but I was unable to find a way to enlarge the screen. Video Lan Player is another .flv player you can use, and it will enlarge to the entire screen.

If the video has good enough resolution for enlarging (the recent movie from Aaron Russo at freedomtofascism.com worked great on my big screen TV), you might want to choose Video Lan Player instead. You can have both installed on your computer with no problem, I do.

A Couple of More Notes
Video download is going to be habit forming. Remember that videos will eat disk space like I eat dark chocolate, so watch your consumption if your disk space is limited.

From what I can tell, these methods don't work with Yahoo! videos, at least not that I can tell. Their videos always have ads first and many times play only the ad and never the feature that caused you to click in the first place. Maybe they'll fix that, who knows.

So there you have it. Downloading those videos to your computer and playing them smoothly, start to finish, is a snap. Check out the link to my website below for links to the programs mentioned.