The popularity of YouTube, Google Video and other "Flash" based video sites now means there are literally millions of great video clips viewable on the net. However, downloading these videos or watching them offline either requires special players and codecs, that's if you manage to download them in the first place.
This guide will show you how to download the video from sites like YouTube and Google Video, how to playback these file and if you want to, convert them to the more universal AVI/DivX format - all using freeware tools!
Software you'll need:
You need to first download and install the Mozilla FireFox browser. Once it is installed, start FireFox and within it, go to this address: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390. Scroll down the page and find the "Install Now" link and click on it.
You will need to restart FireFox now to enable the plugin.
Now go to the YouTube/Google Video page that contains the video (in FireFox, of course). On the bottom right of the FireFox browser, you should now see an icon for the VideoDownloader plugin - double click on this icon and another window opens with the video download link.
Right click on the
button and from the menu, select "Save Link As".
From the save dialog that opens, choose a location to save the file, change "Save as type" to "All Files" and change the filename so that the extension is ".flv" (see image below for example). Press the "Save" button and the .flv file will be saved to your hard drive.
You have now downloaded the video (in FLV format) to your hard-drive. The next step involves playing back this FLV file.
This guide will show you how to download the video from sites like YouTube and Google Video, how to playback these file and if you want to, convert them to the more universal AVI/DivX format - all using freeware tools!
Software you'll need:
- Mozilla FireFox
- Media Player Classic
- ffdshow
- Dr. DivX
You need to first download and install the Mozilla FireFox browser. Once it is installed, start FireFox and within it, go to this address: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390. Scroll down the page and find the "Install Now" link and click on it.
You will need to restart FireFox now to enable the plugin.
Now go to the YouTube/Google Video page that contains the video (in FireFox, of course). On the bottom right of the FireFox browser, you should now see an icon for the VideoDownloader plugin - double click on this icon and another window opens with the video download link.
Right click on the
button and from the menu, select "Save Link As".From the save dialog that opens, choose a location to save the file, change "Save as type" to "All Files" and change the filename so that the extension is ".flv" (see image below for example). Press the "Save" button and the .flv file will be saved to your hard drive.
You have now downloaded the video (in FLV format) to your hard-drive. The next step involves playing back this FLV file.
Step 2: Playing back the FLV file
You can skip to "Step 3: Converting FLV files to DivX (AVI)" if you don't wish to playback the FLV file and only want to convert it to AVI/DivX.
We can use Media Player Classic and ffdshow to playback FLV files. Media Player Classic has built in FLV playback (FLV4 format), but some FLV files are in FLV1 format and you will need ffdshow to play these files back.
The following "Installing MPC" and "Installing ffdshow" sections assume you don't have ffdshow installed and you don't plan on using ffdshow + MPC for anything other than FLV playback.
Installing MPC:
Installing ffdshow:
The following "Configure fddshow" section is required even if you have already installed ffdshow before.
Configure ffdshow:
Associating .flv files with MPC:
You can now use Media Player Classic to play FLV files.
If you want to convert the FLV file to a more common format like DivX (for use in video editing, DVD burning ...), then please continue.
You can skip to "Step 3: Converting FLV files to DivX (AVI)" if you don't wish to playback the FLV file and only want to convert it to AVI/DivX.
We can use Media Player Classic and ffdshow to playback FLV files. Media Player Classic has built in FLV playback (FLV4 format), but some FLV files are in FLV1 format and you will need ffdshow to play these files back.
The following "Installing MPC" and "Installing ffdshow" sections assume you don't have ffdshow installed and you don't plan on using ffdshow + MPC for anything other than FLV playback.
Installing MPC:
- Download the MPC version that is suitable for your operating system
- MPC is really just a single executable, so extract the .exe file to any directory you wish (eg. c:\Program Files\Media Player Classic\)
- Click on the .exe file to start MPC. Easy.
Installing ffdshow:
- Check to see if you already have ffdshow installed (Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs).
- Download ffdshow and start the install. When asked to select the "Video decoders", deselect everything to make sure ffdshow doesn't interfere with your existing playback setup.
On the next screen, again deselect everything.
- Deselect the "Postprocessing" on the next step and also "Volume normalization" on the step after.
- Proceed with the rest of the installation (you do not need to change any of the default selected options).
The following "Configure fddshow" section is required even if you have already installed ffdshow before.
Configure ffdshow:
- The ffdshow installer should have created a Start Menu folder. Go into this folder and select the "Video decoder configuration" option.
- On the left hand side, select the "Codecs" option and on the right hand side, find the entry for "FLV1" and make sure the "libavcodec" option is selected. Press the "Apply" button to save the changes and the "OK" button to close the config program.
Associating .flv files with MPC:
- Right click on the ".flv" you are using for this test. From the menu that opens, select the "Open With -> Choose Program" option, or if it isn't there, select "Open".
- Click on "Browse" and locate your MPC .exe file (eg. c:\Program Files\Media Player Classic\mplayerc.exe). Select the "Always use the selected program ..." option if you want to make the association permanent. Press "OK" to close the window.
You can now use Media Player Classic to play FLV files.
If you want to convert the FLV file to a more common format like DivX (for use in video editing, DVD burning ...), then please continue.
Step 3: Converting FLV files to DivX (AVI)
Download and install Dr. DivX (assuming you have already installed the DivX codec). Start Dr. DivX and you should see this screen:
Click on the "Open" button next to the "Input file(s)" box and load in your FLV file. You might have to change the "Files of type" setting to "All Files" to be able to see the FLV file. Alternatively, you can drag and drop the FLV file into the "Input file(s)" box.
On the right hand side, enter a file name under the "Title" section and click on the "..." button to the right to select the output directory.
There are lots of option to configure, especially in the "Advanced" section (please refer to the DivX 6 Setup Guide for more information on these advanced settings), but for the purpose of this tutorial, simply select one of the "DivX Profiles" (High Definition, Home Theatre, Portable and Handheld) that suits what you plan to do with the file. You can also select a "Quality" setting (the software will try to encode a video to this quality, but the file size might not be predictable), or alternatively limit the output file to a certain size.
When you are done, press the "Encode" button and the current encoding will be added to the job queue.
Press the "Resume" button to start the encoding and after a short while, you should now have a ".divx" file. You can change this ".divx" file to ".avi" to make it into an AVI file (if you cannot see the file extension, you can enable it in Windows by going into Tools -> Folder Options -> View and deselecting the "Hide extension for known file types" option" - see this image for more details).
Now that the file is in AVI format, you can now convert it to many other types of files much more easily. You can even re-encode the file to XviD if you wish using AutoGK.
And we're done
Download and install Dr. DivX (assuming you have already installed the DivX codec). Start Dr. DivX and you should see this screen:
Click on the "Open" button next to the "Input file(s)" box and load in your FLV file. You might have to change the "Files of type" setting to "All Files" to be able to see the FLV file. Alternatively, you can drag and drop the FLV file into the "Input file(s)" box.
On the right hand side, enter a file name under the "Title" section and click on the "..." button to the right to select the output directory.
There are lots of option to configure, especially in the "Advanced" section (please refer to the DivX 6 Setup Guide for more information on these advanced settings), but for the purpose of this tutorial, simply select one of the "DivX Profiles" (High Definition, Home Theatre, Portable and Handheld) that suits what you plan to do with the file. You can also select a "Quality" setting (the software will try to encode a video to this quality, but the file size might not be predictable), or alternatively limit the output file to a certain size.
When you are done, press the "Encode" button and the current encoding will be added to the job queue.
Press the "Resume" button to start the encoding and after a short while, you should now have a ".divx" file. You can change this ".divx" file to ".avi" to make it into an AVI file (if you cannot see the file extension, you can enable it in Windows by going into Tools -> Folder Options -> View and deselecting the "Hide extension for known file types" option" - see this image for more details).
Now that the file is in AVI format, you can now convert it to many other types of files much more easily. You can even re-encode the file to XviD if you wish using AutoGK.
And we're done
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