A quick search for a YouTube downloader has produced quite a few links. Any recommendations as to a choice of YouTube downloader?

www.keepvid.com

But I use the Opera browser and it’s got a plug-in so I just click a link that’s added to the YT page and download it from there.
(Like I am right now in fact)

I use this one which seems efficient enough: http://www.savevid.com/

Spiny Norman said:

www.keepvid.com

But I use the Opera browser and it’s got a plug-in so I just click a link that’s added to the YT page and download it from there.
(Like I am right now in fact)

I use:

http://www.apowersoft.com/youtube-downloader-suite.html

Cost about $30, from memory. Works well. It also converts all different sort of video and audio files.

Spiny Norman said:

www.keepvid.com

But I use the Opera browser and it’s got a plug-in so I just click a link that’s added to the YT page and download it from there.
(Like I am right now in fact)

I’m using IE10. Will this be a limitation for the downloader you’re using?

sibeen said:

I use:

http://www.apowersoft.com/youtube-downloader-suite.html

Cost about $30, from memory. Works well. It also converts all different sort of video and audio files.

I’m looking for something that: works, is free, and is safe (with regards to malware). I’m not looking for anything elaborate, just a simple downloader that produces something of not lower quality than the original.

sibeen said:

Spiny Norman said:

www.keepvid.com

But I use the Opera browser and it’s got a plug-in so I just click a link that’s added to the YT page and download it from there.
(Like I am right now in fact)

I use:

http://www.apowersoft.com/youtube-downloader-suite.html

Cost about $30, from memory. Works well. It also converts all different sort of video and audio files.

Cool. I saved $30 then. :)

KJW said:

Spiny Norman said:

www.keepvid.com

But I use the Opera browser and it’s got a plug-in so I just click a link that’s added to the YT page and download it from there.
(Like I am right now in fact)

I’m using IE10. Will this be a limitation for the downloader you’re using?

Well yes, because it’s not Opera and so the plug-in won’t work.
The keepvid site will work though.

On Savevid there’s a message at the top saying you can’t download videos with IE, but just ignore it – it’s not true :)

Bubblecar said:

On Savevid there’s a message at the top saying you can’t download videos with IE, but just ignore it – it’s not true :)

Ok thanks. I wonder why it would say that.

The first link on Google was this:

http://download.cnet.com/YTD-Video-Downloader/3000-2071_4-10647340.html

Any reason why I shouldn’t go here?

KJW said:

The first link on Google was this:

http://download.cnet.com/YTD-Video-Downloader/3000-2071_4-10647340.html

Any reason why I shouldn’t go here?

I’d go and read the review.

here’s an extract.

“The free version of YTD Video Download only allows downloading to the MP4 video format, so the additional conversion functionality for changing the file to WMV, AVI, or MP3 is welcome, but why not just convert the download on the fly? Converting video files worked acceptably well, although I did crash the app once converting a Download Video Preview from MP4 to MP3. The conversion completed, but the program become unresponsive and I had to force quit. I experienced other occasional brief program hangs when downloading large videos from foreign sites.”

I stay as far away from cnet as possible these days. Once upon a time they were great. Now, not so much.

I use Keepvid. Just copy the Youtube URL into the Keepvid page and Robert’s your mothers male sibling.

Another vote for keepvid.com,

Lets you select the file quality – and using many free apps you can easily strip out the audio (any music you’ve ever heard is available on youtube).

Spiny Norman said:

www.keepvid.com

But I use the Opera browser and it’s got a plug-in so I just click a link that’s added to the YT page and download it from there.
(Like I am right now in fact)

What plugin are you using?  I have the SaveFrom.net Helper, but it’s a bit unreliable, and it refused to download a video the other day because it was too big (it was a 1½ hour interview on YouTube).

KJW said:

I’m looking for something that: works, is free, and is safe (with regards to malware). I’m not looking for anything elaborate, just a simple downloader that produces something of not lower quality than the original.

I’ve rediscovered Freemake Video Downloader (http://www.freemake.com/free_video_downloader/) as a result, and it’s working very nicely;  but a browser plugin that works would be nice, too.

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keepvid.com

Thanks. :-) I’ve tried this and it seems to work fairly well. There are some “inconveniences”, but ultimately it does what I need it to do, so I am happy with it.

I mostly use a YouTube downloader add-on for Firefox, but I sometimes use youtube-dl , a multi-platform Python script. It’s a command-line program with no GUI, but it’s quite versatile, and is capable of downloading video from a variety of sites. Of course, being a Python script it won’t work if you don’t have Python installed. :)

It’s good for getting a complete list of all the formats available for a given video – the format list created by the Firefox add-on is not always complete. And it’s very handy for delayed downloading, i.e., you can call it in a script to D/L stuff during off-peak times.