There's no question, YouTube is an integral part of our lives. It serves as a great resource for literally anything and everything. From time-wasting videos to legitimate work-related stuff... it's indispensable.
There are, however, occasions where streaming video live from the site itself can pose a challenge. For example, if you were to use a video during an important presentation, you wouldn't want to rely on streaming it. Your Internet could be slow that day, WiFi acts funny... any number of potential problems could cause a disaster. In cases like that, a better idea would be to download the video to your local hard drive, and play it from there.
Unfortunately, YouTube does't make it easy to download their content. Have no fear, there is an easy way to circumvent their preference. Here's how:
- Navigate to the YouTube video you wish to download
- In the address bar, highlight the address and copy it (into memory)
- Navigate to www.keepvid.com and paste the YouTube URL into the search field then press <enter>
The screen will look like this:
Once KeepVid has found the video, it will give you several options to download. I typically choose the highest resolution possible for the format MP4 (note that some are video-only). Once the file has been downloaded (found in your Downloads folder), you can now use it anywhere you need to! Sync to your iPhone, embed into a Keynote/PowerPresentation, etc.
