How to Download Youtube Videos to Your Computer

When you learn to download Youtube videos, you learn to compensate for Youtube's one major flaw - that it is a streaming, online only video service.  Should you want to view these videos on a portable device or show them to someone who does not have high speed Internet access, you are simple out of luck.  This is unfortunate, given the huge amount of interesting, diverse content available for viewing.  Read on to learn how to download Youtube videos to your computer to be viewed at your convenience using nothing more than a few basic tools.

1. The first thing that you will need to download Youtube videos is the Firefox web browser.  if you don't already have or use it, you can simply go to http://www.mozilla.com to download it to your computer for free.  Internet Explorer does not support plugins, so you would need other software in addition.
2. Click on "Tools" on the top menu bar, then on "Add Ons."  This will open the extensions menu, where we will install the necessary software.
3. To open the plugin search window, click on. "Get Add Ons."
4. Type "video download" or "Youtube download" for your search terms to bring up a list of plugins that will download Youtube videos to your computer for you.
5. Select the extension that you want to install.  There are a number of them that will do the job well, but one of the most simple, popular ones is called DownloadHelper.  Click, "Add to Firefox," to install the extension.
6. Restart Firefox when you are prompted.  This will complete the installation of your selected plugin.
7. Open Youtube and find a video that you want to download.  Make sure that the video is at least loading before your proceed.
8. Click on the arrow at the side of the spinning DownloadHelper icon to pull up a list of available videos it sees on the current page.  Sometimes it will show up as, "video.flv," but it will frequently have the proper title.
9. Select the video you wish to save, then a location to save it to.

When the download completes, you will be able to view the saved video.  It is saved in FLV format, so make sure that the media player you use supports this format.