How can I download Youtube videos?

Q

I am a former Web User subscriber who, on its closure, was transferred over to Computeractive – and I am delighted with it. Could you tell me the best way to download hour-long recordings of waterfalls on Youtube? I would love to transfer one to a USB stick, then display it on a small TV set.

Steve Jessney

A

We recommend using a free tool called Youtube-dl, which needs to be run via Command Prompt. To download it, go to www.snipca.com/37249 and click the ‘Windows.exe’ link at the top of the page. Next, open File Explorer (press Windows key+e) and navigate to your Downloads folder (click This PC in the left-hand pane, then Downloads). To open Command Prompt in this folder, press Alt+d to highlight File Explorer’s address bar, then type cmd and press Enter.

In your browser, open the Youtube video you want to record, click the address bar, then press Ctrl+a to select the entire URL, followed by Ctrl+c to copy it. Now return to the Command Prompt window, type youtube-dl followed by a space, then press Ctrl+v to paste the Youtube URL (see screenshot). When you press Enter, Youtube-dl will start downloading the video. How long this takes depends on the video’s length and your broadband speed - it took us just over eight minutes to download an hour-long video on our 60Mbps connection. Once the download is complete, the video will be saved in the same folder as Youtube-dl (it will have the same name as it has in Youtube).

If you’d prefer not to use Command Prompt, VLC ( www. videolan.org) can also download videos. However, it records the video by playing it in real time, so your one-hour waterfall clip will take one hour to record. Open VLC, then press Ctrl+r and select the Network tab. Paste your Youtube URL in the box, then click ‘Convert/save’. Now click Browse, choose where you want to save the video file, then click Save followed by Start.