Most of today's internet traffic is spent streaming video online, with YouTube taking a big chunk. More than 400 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, and YouTube has a greater reach in the 18-49 demographic than even cable TV.
And then you have to consider other video streaming sites like Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Twitch, etc. That's a lot of data flowing around, and if your ISP caps your monthly data allotment, then all this video streaming can get expensive.
The solution is to capture or download online videos. XVideoServiceThief is the ultimate Download Manager for online videos. XVideoServiceThief is the Ultimate Download Manager for Online Videos Have you ever come across an online video that you would like to download? Then this open source cross-platform tool is all you need. Read More to watch offline, It allows you to rewatch as many times as you like without losing data. Here are some of the best tools to capture and download videos in real time so you can watch them offline.
Available at: Chrome, Firefox.
Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Lynda, Twitter, Udemy, and hundreds of other sites.
Video DownloadHelper is easily one of the most useful browser extensions you'll ever install. It's even easier to use than the VideoGrabby mentioned above, but the drawback (more or less) is that you have to install it in your browser. But if you download a lot of videos daily, Video DownloadHelper is definitely worth it!
The extension adds a button to the side of your browser's address bar. When you come across a video online, just click the button to download any video on the current page.
Available at: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Flickr, Dailymotion, and various other sites.
4K Video Downloader is the simplest and most direct tool. We recommend it if you want a hassle-free option that requires close to zero effort.
Just copy the URL of an online video and paste it into 4K Video Downloader. You can paste links to YouTube playlists or YouTube channels to download all available videos, and you can even subscribe to YouTube channels and automatically download new videos as they become available. You can also download annotations and subtitles on YouTube videos.
Video downloads are available in 8K, 4K, 1080p, or 720p as long as the source video has been uploaded at that resolution, of course. The videos can be downloaded in MP4, MKV and FLV formats. Or you can download only the audio part in MP3 or M4A formats. (What is the difference between MP3 and MP4?)
Available at: Windows.
Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, Liveleak, Veoh, Vimeo, Dailymotion and dozens of other sites.
Freemake Video Downloader is one of the most popular video downloading tools out there. It's completely free, easy to use, and relatively flexible when it comes to quality and format options. The only downside is that it's only available on Windows.
Videos can be downloaded in various formats including AVI, FLV, MKV, MP4, and WMV. The videos can also be downloaded in MP3 format if you only want the audio part. The actual process only requires the URL of the video, just copy and paste it.
Available at: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Supported sites: Just about any streaming video site.
JDownloader is like Freemake Video Downloader but with a twist. It takes the URL of any page that has a streaming video, pastes it into the app, and it will scan it for all the videos it can detect. You can choose which of the detected videos you want to download.
The nice thing about JDownloader is that you don't need the direct URL of a specific video. Take a MakeUseOf article with five embedded videos, for example, and all of them will be detected. This makes it very easy to capture several different videos at once.
Packet warning!
When you run the installer, you will find a page that offers to install “Bing Search” or something else. On this page, the buttons will change to Decline and Accept. Be sure to click Decline! This will prevent packages from being installed on your system.
Available at: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, HBO, Metacafe, Vimeo, Dailymotion and thousands of other sites.
youtube-dl is a tool for advanced users who are comfortable using the command line. If you prefer graphical interfaces, save yourself the headache and just use one of the ones listed above.
But if you're okay with command line utilities, then youtube-dl offers the most flexibility of any video downloader. However, it's complicated enough to have a non-trivial learning curve, so be prepared to read the documentation or you'll get lost.
You can also try youtube-dl-gui which is an unofficial front end user interface available for Windows and Linux.
Features include various video quality and selection parameters, playlist processing, download speed limit, batch video download, automatic file naming, inclusion of ads (currently experimental), and subtitle download (for sites like YouTube).
The following formats are supported:3GP, AAC, FLV, M4A, MP3, MP4, OGG, WAV, and WEBM.
If you find a video that is not supported by any of the above tools, the last resort is to play the video in full screen mode and record your screen while it is playing. It's not a perfect solution, but it works when nothing else does.
Check out our favorite screen recorder apps to get started. If you can get the direct URL of an online video, you can also use VLC to play and record online videos as a kind of streaming video recorder.
