Download the New Real Player 11. It makes online video downloadable now. This is the first time I've willingly used Real Player in 5 years.

'nuff said.

So does Ook? Video Ook!, and it doesn't shiat itself all over your system when you install it.

When Real makes a player that doesn't try to invade every part of your machine, they can talk to me. Not until.

Why not just point a video camera to your computer screen and capture the clips that way?

/not serious.

I prefer keepvid.com myself. No software to download; you just plug in the complete URL and it gives you a download link.

The only caveat (especially with YouTube): You have to rename the file as "<something>.flv" from "get_video".

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Ook! downloads them with the proper filename out of the gate. But if using that site is easier for some people than installing a Firefox plugin, then a simple file rename is hardly a taxing effort.

And what do you use to play the .flv files? Nothing I've tried does it.

VLC Media Player is a free program that will play them.

For Mac users on Safari, I recommend using FLVR. Not only does it download the Flash video, but it can convert it to MPEG-4, or QuickTime as well.

And for those looking for a free alternative: Safari can be used by itself to download the Flash video, and the free program iSquint will convert the video to MPEG-4. (iSquint's big brother VisualHub will convert to other formats -- in fact, it converts pretty much any video format to any other -- but isn't free.)

I second David's mention of VisualHub - it has been worth every penny and has been a great timesaver in burning quick-and-dirty video DVDs for me.

Well for me, I use GOMPlayer. It actually plays any file imagineable (almost) including FLVs.

And I'll second him on iSquint. It's a neat little program that's easy to use and has always worked perfectly for me.

Score one for JPM800. I'd never seen that before, but it looks like it's worthy of a look. I've never liked the look and feel of VLC. (Admittedly, I've never played with the skinnability aspect, either.)

clemon79: Ook? Video Ook!

jackpotman800: GOMPlayer

You guys are my new heroes. Thanks a lot.

-M

Once I download a video from Youtube using Keepvid, I usually convert it to .mov for my iPod using CinemaForge. It converts to other multiple common file types as well for one's convenience.

For any Firefox users...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

DownloadHelper gets pretty much any FLV embedded video.

http://videodownloader.net/

is where i download .flv files

then i use http://videodownloader.net/ to convert to ipod video

and enjoy them on my ipod.