How to download movies from YouTube painlessly

Date: 21 September, 2008  |  Posted By: Chris  |  Category: Information

YouTube is a Web 2.0 enabled video sharing portal. Although YouTube had a humble beginning, today it is one of the most popular destinations for netizens. Three people who had formerly worked for Paypal started it. Google acquired YouTube some years earlier. Now the site is hosted under the flagship of Google Corporation. Since the site features user generated content it became popular within no time. People get to see, share and even jot down comments to the various videos uploaded into YouTube. Registration though not mandatory id required for uploading and commenting on videos. Age restrictions are also placed in YouTube, so that mature content doesn’t fall into the wrong eyes. Although many video sharing sites have cropped up since then, YouTube always lead the pack.

The foremost reason can be attributed to its inception. Since it was the first video sharing site, it got content than all other similar sites. YouTube makes extensive use of Adobe’s Flash media format, especially FLV. Besides the site has an innovative interface and is easy on the eyes and the brain. Anyone who has registered with them can post videos and the same can be watched by millions of people within a few minutes. Many have made themselves heard just by posting a video in YouTube. The FLV format is proprietary and the videos post in YouTube is not free available or distributed by the parent site. But this difficulty was present only in the older days.

Nowadays netizens are provided with various options to download a video from YouTube. One of the most popular methods, commonly used by geeks is to use the online service. In other words, the videos can be downloaded using customized web portals that have been setup just for this purpose. A mere search in the famous search engine Google, returns the site Download YouTube Videos and opens up a whole new arena. Such sites employ the following methodology. The user is first asked to enter the URL of the YouTube video, which he is interested in saving. Then he is provided with another link, which is the Video in .flv format. The end user can save this link to his pc or start downloading the video straight away.
Customized softwares are also available which do the previously mentioned method, but automatically. After opening up the desired software, one just needs to enter the URL of the desired video to be downloaded. Usually the downloading is automated too. A serious drawback of both methods is that they get downloaded in .flv format. This format cannot be played on normal media players and requires codecs to be installed on host pc. K-lite Codec Pack is one such codec pack that helps the user in viewing downloaded videos. Media players are also available with the help of which the videos can be viewed. VLC Media Player is one of the most popular among these. The advent of other video sharing sites has not affected YouTube in any way. They will continue to lead the pack with innovative ideas and a robust database.

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