WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - YouTube is the world's largest online video streaming service. Owned by Google, the service is the second most visited website, with more than one billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day.
YouTube is not only a platform that satisfies your entertainment needs, but it's also a great place for learning. While users can stream a number of videos, the service allows only its Premium subscribers to use its downloading feature. And that too only onto your smartphone to watch offline. While, the regular YouTube website doesn't have any feature like this.
So, if you want to download a video from YouTube or save a YouTube video for later use, you would have to use a third-party service. There are several ways one can download videos from YouTube.
However, please keep in mind that most videos on YouTube are copyrighted, meaning, it is illegal to download them from YouTube without paying the creator. As long as you are downloading a video from YouTube for your personal use, it is fine. You should also not use a downloaded video to make monetary gains as it will violate copyright.
Let us now see 3 easy methods to download YouTube videos onto your PC:
Method 1: Downloading YouTube videos using VLC Media player. The VLC is a very popular open-source video player for Windows PC, Mac. It can play almost all formats as well. You can use it to download any YouTube video.
Step 1: Go to https://www.youtube.com/ and open the video you like to download. Copy the video URL.
Step 2: Open VLC media player and go to the Media and click on the 'Open Network Stream' option.
Step 3: In the menu that opens, paste the URL of the YouTube video and then click 'Play' button at the bottom.
Step 4: Go to Tools and click on Codec Information. A new window will open. Copy the information from the location textbox, available at the bottom of the page.
Step 5: Copy-paste the URL into a web browser and press enter. Right-click on the video select 'save video as' to store video on your PC. Or, you can click on the three dots on the right side of the window, and then select 'Download.' The video will download onto your computer as an .MP4 file.
However, VLC Player will only save your video file as 1080p. It does store any higher resolution, even if the YouTube video is available in 2160p or 1440p. The tool also doesn't convert video to other formats.
Method 2: Another easy way to download YouTube videos is to use a third-party app, like YTD Video Downloader, iTubeGo YouTube Downloader, WinX and MacX. These apps allow users to convert and download YouTube clips in different formats and resolutions as well.
Step 1: Download and install YTD Video Downloader or iTubeGo YouTube Downloader.
Step 2: Navigate to the YouTube video you want to save using your browser and copy the URL.
Step 3: Paste the YouTube address from your browser into the app's URL field. And click on the 'Download' button to download video files with high quality.
Method 3: Using online websites to download YouTube videos. Sites like YT5s.com and snappea.com allow users to download YouTube videos.
Step 1: Go to YouTube and open the video you like to download. Copy the video URL.
Step 2: Paste the URL in the search field of the website and click on search button.
Step 3: The website will give you several options to download the video. You can download it as an mp3 or mp4 or in different resolutions upto 1080p as well.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
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