Downloading YouTube Videos: The 10 Extensions You’ll Need

YouTube videos are nice, but when you find a special one, wouldn’t you like to keep it? Fortunately, there are a number of ways that you can save YouTube videos to your computer, one of them being through the use of Web browser extensions. Here you will learn about about downloading YouTube videos: the 10 extensions you’ll need to get the job done are listed below.

1. Easy YouTube Video Downloader (Firefox) – this free Firefox add-on is promoted as the easiest video downloader extension ever. This utility supports FLV, 3GP, MP3, and MP4 formats and is fully compliant with 720p and 1080p high definition videos. Add this to Firefox by visiting the add-ons Web site and then clicking the “Add to Firefox” button.

2. YouTube Downloader (Chrome) – a basic YouTube downloader for Chrome. To install it, just visit the Web site for the extension and click the “Add to Chrome” button. When you click to download, the extension will prompt you for the video quality that you want.

3. YouTube Downloader for IE (Internet Explorer) – with all the attention focused on Firefox and Chrome these days, it’s easy to forget that there are add-ons available for Internet Explorer too. To use this add-on you need to paste in the URL of the video you want to download. You can also choose to convert to other formats (such as mobile) so you can bring your videos with you on your phone.

4. Fast YouTube Search (Chrome) – let’s you access YouTube with just a single click to help you find videos that interest you. This convenient and powerful extension saves time and gives you more enjoyment in YouTube. This is a free extension for Chrome.

5. NetVideoHunter Video Downloader (Firefox) – a Firefox add-on that works with more video sites than just YouTube including Google Video, Metacafe, MySpace Music, and other. The default settings of this utility download videos in the best quality available.

6. SmartVideo (Chrome) – a utility that provides “smart” buffering that improves the quality and performance of the YouTube videos you watch. This is especially good for those with slower Internet connections. This free extension for Chrome also supports automatic looping and quality selection.

7. YouTube Search (Internet Explorer) – allows you to highlight text in a Web page and automatically search for related YouTube videos. To install this, click the orange “Add to Internet Explorer” button at the add-on’s Web site.

8. YouTube2Mobile (Chrome) – a Chrome extension that will allow you to download videos for use on your mobile device via Bluetooth, or memory card.

9. Ultimate YouTube Downloader (Firefox) – this plugin downloads YouTube videos in MP4, FLV, and 3GP formats via a simple Firefox interface. With this add-on, you don’t have to worry about taking extra steps to format your video for your mobile device or other application because the file conversion is processed on the fly as you download.

10. Download YouTube Videos + (Firefox) – uses both a browser button and a toolbar button to give you access to easy YouTube downloads. It also has a Bing search function and buttons for Facebook and StumbleUpon to give you was access for sharing. You can download in a ton of formats too (mp4,wmv, flv, ram, mpg, movie, divx, rbs, avi, mov, asf, and others), giving you great flexibility to accommodate your purpose. Also, this screen shot has an integrated screen shot feature.

Don’t forget these powerful tools when downloading YouTube videos: the 10 extensions you’ll need are all right here so get started now.

Kip writes about technology at BroadbandCompare.com.au, a leading website based in Australia where you can find ADSL broadband and bundles from all of the best broadband providers.

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Life In A Day is a historic global experiment to create the world’s largest user-generated feature film: a documentary, shot in a single day, by you. On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.

For more information, visit youtube.com/lifeinaday.

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YouTube turning on automatic captions

Google is ready to launch an ambitious attempt to provide captions for videos on YouTube.

The company is holding an event in Washington D.C. Thursday to announce that it has developed a way to use the voicemail transcription technology in Google Voice to allow videos to be uploaded to YouTube with captions automatically generated. Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google, will host the event highlighting Google’s work in bringing this technology to YouTube.

Ever since 2006, Google has allowed those uploading videos to first Google Video, and then YouTube, to place captions in their videos so that deaf or hearing-impaired viewers can follow what’s going on. However, there’s only about 100,000 videos on YouTube (out of the hundreds of millions on the site) that use the caption option because of the time and expense of transcribing a video, uploading a caption, and timing it properly to the action onscreen.

Warning that results may vary at first, Google engineers later this week plan to turn automatic captioning loose on the YouTube Education channel for videos in English. YouTube will also activate a feature that lets video uploaders do their own transcription but syncs up the timing of the caption itself, so long as all the words in the video are present in the text file uploaded along with the video.

Google plans to demonstrate the automatic caption technology later on Thursday.

From CNET.com

High Definition 1080p Video Coming to YouTube Next Week

YouTube is introduce support for 1080p high-definition (HD) video from next week, allowing film shot in HD quality to be uploaded and viewed on the site.

The official YouTube blog explains that the new maximum – which almost doubles the number of lines on a video from the present maximum of 720p – is being introduced as consumer cameras have become better and better, with more HD quality.

Existing videos that have been uploaded in 1080p, which presently only appear in 720p quality, are being re-encoded for the higher-quality version, says Billy Biggs, a software engineer at the Google-owned video company.

An accompanying video shows the difference (included at a smaller size below) between the different qualities – though it is slow to load because 1080p video requires substantially more storage than lower-quality formats.

The introduction of more high-quality video will increase the friction between Google, and particularly YouTube, and various internet service providers in the US, where “net neutrality” has become a sore point. Some ISPs and telephone companies argue that companies which send large amounts of data – particularly video – over their networks should pay to ensure that it does not block others from sending their data. Google and other companies contend that it is the telephone companies’ and ISPs’ responsibility to maintain the standards of their networks to meet growing demand for high-volume data transmission.

From Guardian.co.uk