How-To: Download Youtube Videos (Alternative Method)

In a previous article, How-To: Download Videos From Youtube, we discovered how to get your favorite video or maybe even a song from Youtube. The method mentioned in that How-To was probably the most efficent since there were usually only one or two steps to downloading. Still, I have found an amazing glitch in Youtube that allows you to download the videos without the need for any special programs. Read More...

So what is this brand new way to download the videos? Well I came across, while working on my new site TubeAddict, I was looking at the Youtube RSS feed information page. It said that each user had a feed that you could subscribe to their videos through a reader. While doing some field tests, I noticed something on the feed page. It is formatted like a blog and Each post is a video. This is where I discovered the hack. Below the post it says Media Files. Below that is a link that says: [VideoID].swf. The swf, if you don't know, it the flash file that contains the actual video. To download it simply right click on the link and click Save Target As... in Internet Explorer or Save Link As... in Firefox. Here are the complete steps to downloading:

1. Logout of any services such as Google or Yahoo that automatically redirect feeds to their readers.
2. Type feed://www.youtube.com/rss/user/[UserName]/video.rss and replace [UserName] with the author's Youtube User Name.
3. Find the video in the list.
4. Right click on the download link (Should be in the format of [VideoID].swf), and click Save Target As... in Internet Explorer, or Save Link As... in Firefox.
5. Choose a location to download the file to.

From here you can download a free FLV player such as Wimpy (Strange Name, Isn't It!) or FLV Player 2. You can also convert your FLV file to a readable media format with a conversion website such as Media Convert or Zamzar. For more information on file conversion see our File Conversion How-To.