How to Download YouTube Videos Easily

Aren't there some video clips on YouTube that you just wish you could download to your hard disk, and be able to view offline? The reasons can range from wanting to conserve bandwidth, to view on a Media Player device, or to upload the same file elsewhere. It could simply be the desire to watch a YouTube video when you feel like it, without having to wait for the streaming video to buffer and load, and without annoying pauses.

Be aware though, that copyrighted material is not supposed to be uploaded onto the service, nor downloaded and stored offline. PC World advises you to use the techniques suggested here only for non-copyrighted content, such as home videos that friends or relatives might have uploaded, or other content that the YouTube video uploader has clearly marked as being freely distributable.

There are multiple ways of grabbing the video stream you want to watch, including JavaScript bookmarks, Firefox extensions/addons and third-party websites that sift through the YouTube page to give you a direct link that can be downloaded using your browser or a download manager. Third-party applications to help in this quest abound too, but none so far are able to reliably process a list of YouTube URLs in batch-mode.

One particular application has managed to provide an easy interface and keep having consistent version upgrades to keep it working in-sync with YouTube’s own changes designed to throw such apps off the trail. It is even able to download Full HD - 1080p High Definition videos with 1920x1080 pixels resolution for providing maximum quality. Named "Youtube Downloader HD" and currently at version 1.9, it is claimed to work on versions of Windows all the way from Win98 to Win7. We tested it on Windows 7 64-bit edition. You can get this application from the URL - http://www.youtubedownloaderhd.com/download.html

Scope of Youtube Downloader HD

Once downloaded and installed, it has its own video tutorial to help you learn its usage. But that is not really required. You will quickly see it is a very simple program indeed, and will be on your way downloading YouTube videos with ease, in no time at all. All you need to do is visit the page of the YouTube video you want to download, and copy/paste the URL into the application. At the time of writing, Youtube Downloader HD was working for all videos including those flagged (for age-based censorship) and those for which you needed to login to view.

Downloading YouTube videos at high-quality

There are 5 levels of video quality on YouTube, and this downloader faithfully offers them all as options. Some videos may only be available at lower quality, and some may only be available at higher quality. If you have an unlimited internet connection and want to obtain the video with the highest possible quality, we suggest that you pick the "AVI Full HD (1080p)" option while starting download of a video. The Youtube downloader will automatically fall back step-by-step if the video you are trying to download is not available at such a high quality. Since YouTube's 4K video support is still a novelty, super high-quality 4K video is not an option just yet. Depending on connection speed, the video will finish downloading, and be saved in the folder you chose.

Multiple instances and download completion

You can run multiple instances of the application to download multiple files at a time if you have enough bandwidth. Just be careful about observing the center of your screen for the "download completed" dialog box – even if you have 20 instances of it running and distributed its windows across your screen, the completion dialog for all of them only ever pops up in that precise location. If another instance is open on top of the dialog box, you'll easily miss being informed when the download is complete.