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Downloading YouTube videos

gmbteach

gmbteach

Mrs Frizzle
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On my journey :D
I know I live with, and love, a tech person, but we are debating options and want your opinions and advice. Bilby will add clarification as he knows more about what I am after on the technical side.

Being a teacher, YouTube is an awesome resource for videos for learning, especially the repetitive stuff like days of the week (thanks Addams family), or months, seasons, etc. alphablocks is also neat, as are dance videos. We sometimes have bandwid problems at school (especially around NAPLAN), and it would we useful for teachers to have the videos on a usb so they can plug them into our interactive whiteboards and play them so that the kids stay in routine. Or embed them into a PowerPoint for the same reason.

At the moment, I send the urls to Bilby, who downloads them, and I get them then. i would like to do this myself so I don’t take up his valuable off time.

Here is the problem. I have a school laptop that has Windows. So that I can create and keep any resources I make, I also have a Windows laptop at home. Bilby runs Linux on his machine, and uses a Linux program to download the videos at the moment.

Do any of you know of a good, preferably free, software that will download YouTube videos (without ads) onto a Windows Machine? Ideally the files shouldn’t be too big so that I can put several on to a 16 gb USB (cheap as chips here), or small enough to email to people.

I know I could partition my laptop to dual boot, but we think that might cause more problems.

I look forward to your advice.
 
I use youtube-dl, which is able to download video from pretty much any URL (despite the name) and can seamlessly invoke ffmpeg to convert to whatever format and size you want.

I have zero clue whether something similar exists in Windows world.
 
There are a number of Firefox browser extensions that download videos. I use yt-dl for Linux. Since I don't use Windows, I can't say which is the best extensions for Windows users, but google for browser extensions. There is a way to use yt-dl in Windows, but it needs a runtime library also, of which I know nothing.
 
JDownloader 2. Last I knew the standard version had bundled adware but there was a link in their message board that had a version without. It's been years, I didn't keep the URL. It also allows you to select the audio and video track to download (size and encoding.)
 
As far as I know, as long as you have YT Premium, you can d/l ad-free videos directly from the download link on just about any YT video. And you can choose standard definition or HD for the d/l if size is a concern.
 
gmbteach said:
ZiprHead said:
As far as I know, as long as you have YT Premium, you can d/l ad-free videos directly from the download link on just about any YT video. And you can choose standard definition or HD for the d/l if size is a concern.
Click to expand...
I wonder how much that is?
Click to expand...
I think it is US$11.99 (AU$14.99) per month. You can get a free trial for at least the first month. I have it and it doesn't let you save videos as a useful format like .mp4. Instead you go to the YouTube site and go to the Downloads section to see the locally saved videos. It is mostly intended for mobile phone users for watching videos when they have a poor connection.
 
Last edited:
excreationist said:
gmbteach said:
ZiprHead said:
As far as I know, as long as you have YT Premium, you can d/l ad-free videos directly from the download link on just about any YT video. And you can choose standard definition or HD for the d/l if size is a concern.
Click to expand...
I wonder how much that is?
Click to expand...
I think it is US$11.99 (AU$14.99) per month. You can get a free trial for at least the first month. I have it and it doesn't let you save videos as a useful format like .mp4. Instead you go to the YouTube site and go to the Downloads section to see the locally saved videos. It is mostly intended for mobile phone users for watching videos when they have a poor connection.
Click to expand...
I am not going to pay $15 a month for something I know I can get Bilby to download for free.
 
gmbteach said:
excreationist said:
gmbteach said:
ZiprHead said:
As far as I know, as long as you have YT Premium, you can d/l ad-free videos directly from the download link on just about any YT video. And you can choose standard definition or HD for the d/l if size is a concern.
Click to expand...
I wonder how much that is?
Click to expand...
I think it is US$11.99 (AU$14.99) per month. You can get a free trial for at least the first month. I have it and it doesn't let you save videos as a useful format like .mp4. Instead you go to the YouTube site and go to the Downloads section to see the locally saved videos. It is mostly intended for mobile phone users for watching videos when they have a poor connection.
Click to expand...
I am not going to pay $15 a month for something I know I can get Bilby to download for free.
Click to expand...
Even paying the $15 doesn't allow you to access the local files with your favourite media player - you can only play it within the YouTube site.
 
That’s not what I want. I want to download them so I can store them on a hard drive. Bandwidth at school is an issue. I have some movies on a hard drive, and some songs and dances, but want more.

the other option we have is to partition my computer to a dual boot system so i can boot from windows or Linux. Or create a VM somewhere. Bilby knows how to do this, but is it practical? Hence why I was looking for a free or low cost - yet effective and efficient- downloader for windows.
 
excreationist said:
gmbteach said:
ZiprHead said:
As far as I know, as long as you have YT Premium, you can d/l ad-free videos directly from the download link on just about any YT video. And you can choose standard definition or HD for the d/l if size is a concern.
Click to expand...
I wonder how much that is?
Click to expand...
I think it is US$11.99 (AU$14.99) per month. You can get a free trial for at least the first month. I have it and it doesn't let you save videos as a useful format like .mp4. Instead you go to the YouTube site and go to the Downloads section to see the locally saved videos. It is mostly intended for mobile phone users for watching videos when they have a poor connection.
Click to expand...
Well, that sucks hairy balls.
 
I had a Firefox add-on that worked well (for almost all videos, not just YouTube) but Firefox disabled it for malware issues. I just tried another add-on (with 'Easy' in the name so not the one Charlie mentions); again ... malware issues. There are websites that offer such downloads but ... are possibly malware.

Is Cygwin a good option for those who want a Unix-like interface but no dual boot? How easy is it to modify and compile Linux application source code to run under Cygwin? (I do see a Cygwin package for flash video downloading.)
 
There are some online sites that make YouTube videos downloadable. Along with sites for Twitter, Instagram, etc.

So one may not need a special app for downloading. I use such sites myself, so I don't have to futz with Windows or Linux. Even if I did have to do so, I could run them in virtual-machine apps like VirtualBox or OS-emulator apps like Crossover.
 
lpetrich said:
There are some online sites that make YouTube videos downloadable. Along with sites for Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Click to expand...
Recommendations?

From three such sites, I do get a mp4 file downloaded, but when I attempt to open (defaulting to KM Player) from File Explorer I get a message: "While files from the Internet can be useful, this file type can potentially harm your computer. If you do not trust the source, do not open this software." I do NOT see this message with mp4 files I download elsehow. I DO see it, now, after downloading via www.y2mate.com, a downloader I've used successfully in the past.

What is it about some mp4 files but not others which triggers this Windows warning?

Should I ignore the warning and click Open?
 
Swammerdami said:
I had a Firefox add-on that worked well (for almost all videos, not just YouTube) but Firefox disabled it for malware issues. I just tried another add-on (with 'Easy' in the name so not the one Charlie mentions); again ... malware issues. There are websites that offer such downloads but ... are possibly malware.

Is Cygwin a good option for those who want a Unix-like interface but no dual boot? How easy is it to modify and compile Linux application source code to run under Cygwin? (I do see a Cygwin package for flash video downloading.)
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, the addon ecosystem incentivizes bad actors buying good extensions and sticking malware in them.
 
Cygwin? I remember using it a lot to get a nice command-line interface, but that was several years ago. So I think it's worth a try.

My current favorite YouTube downloader is 9convert.com - one does not have to download anything to make it work, since all its action is done in its server.
 
lpetrich said:
Cygwin? I remember using it a lot to get a nice command-line interface, but that was several years ago. So I think it's worth a try.

My current favorite YouTube downloader is 9convert.com - one does not have to download anything to make it work, since all its action is done in its server.
Click to expand...
Hmm, would I be able to save the videos to a portable hard drive? Also, please bear in mind that the education department doesn’t allow access to many sites or programs.
 
gmbteach said:
Hmm, would I be able to save the videos to a portable hard drive? Also, please bear in mind that the education department doesn’t allow access to many sites or programs.
Click to expand...
Would you be using your work computer or your home computer for doing those downloads?

Once your file is saved on your computer's HD, it's easy to copy it over to a portable one. Do you have any experience with any computer's filesystem?
 
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