Most of today'southward internet traffic is spent streaming online video, with YouTube taking up a massive chunk. Over 400 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, and YouTube has a greater reach in the 18-49 demographic than even cable Television.

And then you take to consider other video streaming sites like Vimeo, Dailymotion, Twitch, and and then on. That's a lot of data flowing around—and if your Isp caps your monthly data allowance, then all this video streaming can exist expensive.

The solution is to capture or download online videos to sentinel offline, allowing you lot to re-watch videos as many times every bit yous desire without wasting information.

Here are some of the all-time tools for capturing and downloading streaming video from websites online, so you lot can lookout them offline.

one. Video DownloadHelper

videodownloadhelper

Available on: Chrome, Firefox.

Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Lynda, Twitter, Udemy, and hundreds of other sites.

Video DownloadHelper is easily one of the almost useful browser extensions for downloading streaming video that you'll always install. The downside (sort of) is that you have to install it on your browser; if you already run numerous extensions, the last thing you demand is some other i making Chrome even slower. But, if you download numerous videos on a day-to-day basis, Video DownloadHelper is definitely worth information technology.

The extension adds a push button next to your browser's address bar. Whenever y'all come beyond an online video, only click the button to download any video on the electric current folio. Use the pop-up box to decide where to save it on your computer.

2. 4K Video Downloader

Available on: Windows, Mac, Linux.

Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Flickr, Dailymotion, and several other sites.

4K Video Downloader is the simplest and most straightforward tool to capture video from a website. We recommend it if you want a no-hassle option that requires close to zippo effort on your part. It works apace and doesn't throttle your download, plus it's straightforward to get to grips with.

Just copy the URL of an online video and paste it into 4K Video Downloader. Yous can paste links to YouTube playlists or YouTube channels to download every video available. In fact, you can even subscribe to YouTube channels and auto-download new videos as they're fabricated available. You lot can also download the annotations and subtitles in YouTube videos.

Video downloads are bachelor in 8K, 4K, 1080p, or 720p (equally long as the source video was uploaded at that resolution, of course). In addition, videos can also be downloaded in MP4, MKV, and FLV formats. Or, you can download only the audio portion in MP3 or M4A formats.

3. Freemake Video Downloader

Freemake Video Downloader interface

Available on: Windows.

Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, Liveleak, Veoh, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and dozens of other sites.

Freemake Video Downloader is one of the most popular video downloading tools out there. Indeed, it is one of the best online video downloaders for any site.

It's completely free, piece of cake to use, and relatively flexible as far as quality and format options are concerned. Nevertheless, the one big downside is that it'due south only bachelor on Windows.

Videos tin can be downloaded in a handful of formats, including AVI, FLV, MKV, MP4, and WMV. If you but desire the audio portion, videos can as well be downloaded in MP3 format. The bodily process only requires the URL of the video—only copy and paste information technology in.

4. JDownloader

JDownloader 2 interface

Available on: Windows, Mac, Linux.

Supported sites: Nearly any site with streaming video.

JDownloader is a stream downloader, but with a twist. You lot take the URL of whatever page that has a streamed video on information technology, paste it into the app, and it will scan the folio for all the videos information technology can find. You go to pick which of the detected videos you want to download.

The dainty affair about JDownloader is that you don't demand the direct URL of a specific video. For example, have a MakeUseOf article with five embedded videos and all of them volition exist detected. No demand to fumble effectually finding out the direct URL of the video. This makes it effortless to capture several videos at one time.

All the same, be aware that the installer comes with bundleware, which is where other programs are pushed to you that you don't demand. When you lot run the installer, you'll come across a page that offers to install "Bing Search" or something else. On this page, the buttons will change to Pass up and Accept. Ensure yous click Decline because this will forestall bundleware from being installed on your system.

5. youtube-dl

youtube dl

Available on: Windows, Mac, Linux.

Supported sites: YouTube, Facebook, HBO, Metacafe, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and thousands of other sites.

youtube-dl is a tool for avant-garde users who are comfortable using the command line. If you prefer graphical interfaces, relieve yourself the headache and but use one of the ones listed above.

But if you're okay with command line utilities, and then youtube-dl offers the almost flexibility of any video downloading tool. It's complicated enough to have a non-lilliputian learning curve though, then fix to read the documentation, or else you'll be lost.

You could as well try youtube-dl-gui, which is an unofficial forepart-end user interface that'southward available for Windows and Linux.

Features include several video selection and quality parameters, playlist processing, download rate limit, batch video downloading, automatic naming of files, inclusion of ads, and downloading subtitles (for sites like YouTube).

The following formats are supported: 3GP, AAC, FLV, M4A, MP3, MP4, OGG, WAV, and WEBM.

The Concluding Resort for Capturing Online Videos

If you lot encounter a video that isn't supported by any of the in a higher place tools, the last resort is to play the video in full-screen fashion and record your screen as it plays.

It's not a perfect solution, but information technology usually works when naught else does. Keep in mind, however, that some sites and apps (especially Tv set streaming services) will not permit a screen recorder capture the footage. When you go to play the video back again, you will just be faced with a blank screen.

If you can get the directly URL of an online video, you lot tin can also use VLC to play and record online videos as a kind of streaming video recorder.

How to Record Your Screen Using VLC

VLC Media Histrion has many uses, but did y'all know that information technology can record your screen too? Hither's how to easily record your desktop with VLC.

Read Next

About The Author