My Ghetto Primer: How to save You Tube Video

Some say, that these sites will disappear in time, due to obvious copyright infringement issues. So, I've provided a quick primer on how you can download these videos, before they're gone forever.

1. Go to your favorite streaming video site. I like YouTube since it seems to have the greatest variety of clips, from classic skatevideos, to old commercials, to archived music videos, etc. Another one is Google Video. Copy the url/perma link now which is located right below the video you've chosen.

2. Now go to Jay Moya's handy site and proceed to copy-paste your video url in to the appropriate box. Hit the download button. Then, like magic, a link will appear at the top of the page. Right click and save the file. Now this is important.....rename the file extension when you save it. Change the extension .php to .flv.

For those who care .flv is a flash video file format.

3. Technically you now have the .flv video file saved to your computer, ready for viewing anytime you want. The main problem with .flv files, however, is that they are not widely used, except for in web applications.

Even just to play back the .flv you've just downloaded you will probably need to grab a special player. I highly recommend getting VLC Player. It has tons of built in codecs and can handle virtually any video file format you throw at it. Did I mention, it's also free?

4. So now you have this .flv file, what next? Well most people, at this point, convert these files to either mpeg or avi, mostly for the convienience and compatibility of these other formats. I'm not sure who would want to burn these to dvd, considering they are kind of low-res, but if you were inclined, it would require a conversion.

Alot of people have suggested I use Video Downloader at this point in the process, but I never got it to work (the application kept hanging in the conversion process). Perhaps, it will work for you.

I use and endorse Riva Flv Encoder. Check this tutorial on info on how to use it. Basically the program is for creating .flv files, but it's also capable of doing the opposite, which is what we're interested in. In a nutshell, just import your .flv in to the application, and then change your output extension to .avi. Make sure you have audio enabled checked, or you will have a silent film. Voila! Conversion takes a couple of minutes. Experiment with settings and go with whatever works best for you.

Send suggestions and grizzly discoveries to asitarecordings@hotmail.com

Jay Moya Conversion site
VLC Player (download)
Riva FLV Encoder