Due to the increasing popularity of YouTube more and more people want to share their videos in order to be seen everywhere in the world. There are also many interesting videos which we would like want to download and save for future use. But how to do that?

Basically there are two methods:

1. Web based method – downloading videos from specifically designed web sites (it does not requires installing of any additional software)

2. Downloading by using desktop based applications

Here I will explain how to download videos from YouTube by using the web based method.

First you have to find a site providing the possibility for downloading videos. Fortunately,  thеre  are many in the Internet. Some of them offers not only downloading videos but converting them to  3gp,avi, mov,DivX, mp4, or mp3. Other sites allow you to download videos not only from YouTube but from sites like  Google Video, MySpace, Metacafe and Break.com.

Below are some sites which could be used to download videos.

http://www.vconversion.com/
http://www.forinside.com
http://www.keepvid.com/
http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/
http://www.savetube.com/
http://www.kissyoutube.com/
http://www.javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php
http://www.videodownloadx.com/
http://www.youtubemoviesaver.com/
http://www.vidgrab.com/
http://www.pwnyoutube.com/
http://www.videogetting.com/download-youtube.php
http://www.ifiletube.com/
http://www.vixy.net/
http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/
http://www.downloadyoutubevideo.org/
http://www.downloader9.com/
http://www.ripzor.com/youtuberipper.html
http://www.savevideodownload.com/download.php

How to use these sites?

Most of them provide instructions for use but if they don’t you may do the following steps:

1. Go to YouTube, find your video and click on it

2. Copy the URL of  the video. You can see it in the address bar of  your browser.

video URL position

3. Now open one of the above sites and paste the copied url in the field labeled URL

4. Press   Download

5. Click on the link that says “Download”  or  ” Click here to download” or something

6. Save the video

Note: Some sites require to change the file extension of the  downloaded files to  .flv (for example  video.flv) or they will not work.

How to play it?

To play downloaded flv videos you will need an FLV player which  can be downloaded from here or you can directly download videos from sites providing an opportunity for converting to various formats like AVI or DivX. Then you can play them with almost every player.