This tutorial will explain how to save a streaming video (embedded video) from sites such as YouTube, Discovery, HowStuffWorks, news sites, etc. as a file to a local disk (hard drive, flash drive, etc.) The advantage of this is that you can then watch the video offline (when you do not have an Internet connection) and/or use it in a project! A perfect example of when this could be useful would be when you want to show a video from YouTube to a group of people (such as at a conference) and you are not sure whether or not you will have an Internet connection.

Prerequisites: The method covered in this tutorial uses a browser add-on that is only available for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Therefore you must use Mozilla Firefox to use this method. HOWEVER, I have also provided some links at the bottom to ways to do this that are browser independent.

Instructions:

1. Download and install Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/) if you do not already have it. Also, make sure that it is the latest version.

2. After installing or upgrading Firefox, if necessary, install the Video DownloadHelper add-on from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/.

3. Go to YouTube  OR any other site that has an embedded video that you would like to save to your computer.

4. Start playing the video and while the video is playing click on the drop-down menu (the black arrow) beside the DownloadHelper icon. See below.

5. Choose the video that you wish to download. When you click on a video it will either automatically be saved to your Desktop, a dwhelper folder, OR you will be prompted to specify a save location. For some videos there will only be one choice, while for others there may be different resolutions available. See the example below:

6. Save the video file to your computer.

7. The file you download will most likely be either an .mp4 or .flv file. If you download a .mp4 file it can be played in either iTunes or Quicktime.  To play .flv files you will need to download and install the VLC media player. (See below.) *Note: Once iTunes is installed VLC will also play .mp4 files.

Playing .flv Files on Your Computer

1. Download and install the VLC media player from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. (VLC is a free and open source media player that will play almost any media file that can be played on your computer by other media players. (The appropriate codecs must be installed on your computer to play some media.)

2. Open VLC and then open the video from the File menu.

OR change the properties for .flv files on your computer so that they always open with VLC. For instructions on how to do this on a Mac see my article  Changing the Default Application Used to Open Files on Mac OS X.