I use YouTube videos almost every week in our youth ministry. I’ve tried several different sites and add-ons for downloading the videos and here are the two that I recommend:
Online Converter: www.tubefish.net
This is the easiest way to get a video in mpeg format. YouTube videos are in .flv (flash video) format, and this site converts it for you then lets you download it. All you have to do is cut and paste the web address of the video you want. There are several other sites that work the same way, but I have two problems with online converters:
1) They don’t work consistently (tubefish has worked the most consistently for me, plus you can browse videos that other people have downloaded). Here are a couple other online converters. Neither of them work consistently for me but maybe you’ll have more luck with them than I did.
vixy.net (they have a beta version of a desktop app, but I haven’t tried it out.)
2) The second problem I have with online video converters is video quality. Sometimes you lose video quality when you convert it from one format to another, and that’s bad because YouTube videos are often low-quality to start with.
Add-ons
The way I recommend you download YouTube videos is with the Firefox add-on called DownloadHelper.
This technique is more complicated but it works 100% of the time and the video quality is better when you leave it in flash video format.
You’ll also need a Flash video player, or software to convert the the .flv to another format such as mpeg.
I use Flash Video Player because it’s simple.
And I recommend SUPER to convert. . .everything. It isn’t the easiest converter to use, but if you can figure it out you can convert almost any format to any other format.
