Saving YouTube
 

Hi:

I see there are a lot of programmes available which will save YouTube videos to your HD. Does anyone know of a Linux one or a workaround? I haven't been able to find one so far.

Thanks,

L!

I don't know of any programs, but you don't really need a program to do this.

Youtube videos (and other Flash videos) store the content in your /tmp directory while the video is open.

Once you close the window, the temporary file will be gone, but there will be a temporary file in /tmp of the form FlashRANDOMCHARS for every open video.

Example (after opening some video on youtube):

Just copy the file somewhere other than /tmp once the video is fully downloaded.

mplayer is capable of playing this type of video, and mencoder (included with mplayer) is capable of converting it.

Be aware that while I don't believe that it is illegal to download such videos for later viewing, it may be illegal to redistribute them to others.

Miro is a project you might want to watch. It lets you browse sites like youtube, and when you click to watch them, they get stored for a couple of days - but you can safe them permanently.
It is however terribly unstable at the present time.

youtube-dl works fine for me.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006 . Video DownloadHelper Firefox extension
Works for many other flash based sites as well

I added this but it just appears to be a list of video sites.

When I go to the homepage the search option never seems to find any content.

I also tried looking in /tmp but could not find anything. I guess I am not looking in the right directory although I also tried places such as /usr and /cache

RTM: http://www.downloadhelper.net/manual.php

It works great once you actually configure it like the instructions explain in detail.