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This one can.

You can use VideoDownloader's extension and any other Web sites. However, it doesn't seem toi work with MySpace and YouTube videos anymore due to recent changes/upgrades.

I also use free Orbit Downloader for Windows to download streaming videos. This works fine for me.

Both are free.

You can download YouTube videos with a tool like this, then play them with mplayer. Yeah, not terribly convenient, but at least it works.

You don't get a copy of the content. You cant download and store the videos. If you suddenly CAN do this, like some sort of Apple/Google alliance to allow downloads only from Macs, that'd be news - big news.

Yeah, that would be big news.

Well-known examples of producer-specific channels include BBC, NBA, and Al Jazeera.

So major content providers are partnering with YouTube, but their YouTube videos are essentially DRM-free (they can still be downloaded like normal youtube videos can). So are content providers starting to care less about DRM now? Or since most of them are putting teaser promotional videos up, not full-length content, they don't worry so much if the short snippets are copied elsewhere?

The video advert bit is a no-brainer - it is available (but harder to implement) in flash already. Some sites have tried it, and it sometimes works but mainly doesn't.

I'm more worried about the DRM - sites like keepvid and javimoya; plus my very own UnPlug allow you to download the FLV files. If FLVs get DRM, that's bad news for me. But I don't really get how they'll implement this.

Plus there are already ways to obfuscate the content - using the RTMP protocol to transfer videos will already get you a free pass from almost any FLV downloader, and more besides. So what's to gain?

I'm guessing it will be snapped up by myspace, who already do an awful lot to hide their music (you can put mp3 in the flv container), and everyone else will wait and see.

It says "Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube. Instead, they're watched online on the YouTube website, or the YouTube player is embedded in other websites for no cost to the user."

However, the first sentence is untrue at least for firefox users. There is a firefox plugin that can be downloaded from the link below:

This video downloader plugin will allow one to download almost any video from youtube, yahoo video and windows live video!

There are web sites that allow easy download of youtube et al videos. http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php http://www.youtubex.com/

Then it wouldn't be very streamable because of the filesize would it? That is what I asked for in the GP, I'm all for open source but no-one ever seems to come up with an alternative to streaming.

Streaming divx/mpeg1/2 just isn't viable and none of those are technicially open source anyhow!

Are you sure you can't download from youtube? or have you just not tried to look?

Now, I'll ask again. Can anyone tell me a suitable alternative to streaming video files? Preferably open-source that isn't Adobe Flash for webpages? Obviously the filesize will be important!

DugUK

Thanks for the suggestion, but this didn't work for me. I downloaded a video from YouTube using the VideoDownloader 2.0 extension for FireFox and can watch the FLV file just fine in FLV Player 1.3.3. I downloaded MPlayer 1.0pre8 Windows build from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html and ran the command "mplayer -vo null -dumpaudio FLVfilename". It created a stream.dump file, which I then renamed to .MP3. Playing it in Windows Meadia Player indicated that it was a 43 second MP3 (even though the video is close to two minutes) and it was, sadly, 43 seconds of silence.

Any suggestions? Did I mess up somewhere? Thanks!

It is quite easy to download videos from YouTube actually, here. They're in FLV though, so it's not that easy to play, but the new VLC plays FLVs fine as far as I know.

http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

The web URL may be misleading by being written as "youtube_en.php", but you can change the source bias to any of perhaps 30 different proprietary media accessories, including YouTube and GoogleVideo. The media format to download is nothing more than what the author pre-programmed to detect what is available on that website. Most Google Videos I download are available in WMV, MPEG4, and FLV. It seems some I've downloaded only let me use the default FLV. From what I've downloaded on YouTube, I have yet to find a format other than FLV for some reason.

Of'course, once the file is complete it can be converted to a more needful format than FLV by using Transcode with a good front-end or perhaps MediaCoder.

Anyone have anything better?

http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

Use http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php to extract a direct link to the FLV source movie. Then use mplayer to play it. A bit of a hassle, but it works.

Good webdesign is no match for good software.

It is irrelevant. The real question is when this guy will start supporting yahoo downloads?

Oh, but you can! In my experience, it's very easy to follow this form, get one or more URLs, and copy them to wget. No help for Yahoo yet, but I'm sure it's coming eventually.

On the other hand, as others have noted, most YouTube videos are pretty low bit-rate and not that great for keeping around. Often with a little more work, you can find a higher bitrate version of the same video elsewhere on the net.

http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php - Video Downloader, allows you to download videos from Google, My Space, Yahoo, Youtube, and many many more places. I used it to download many videos from Youtube already without much of a problem/