Saving YouTube clips to PC

I'm looking for free software to save YouTube clips to PC.

I am following tutorials in YouTube but before half-way of the month my download monitoring program starts warning that I'm going to go over the limit if I carry on. Hence the need of software to download the tutorials to my pc. I don't intend to do anything with them just save them to my hard drive so I can watch them as many times as I need, without worrying about download limits.

I'm no PC geek and I'm totally broke so I'm looking for something simple to use and free.

 

OK, now I have the software but being a dumbass I'll have to ask what would be the best format to save them as? I have Vinamp and PowerDVD 6.

Ah yes, this is an ancient pc, just about running XP

 

I have been using YouTube Downloader and really like it. It's a very small application (maybe not as light as Halo's suggestion though), easy to use, gives you lots of options if you want them and even has a small viewer included. The format depends on the quality you choose. Generally “normal” will give you FLV format, “HQ” will give you mp4 and so on.

I don't know what formats your players can handle but my most recent (and so far favourite) player is VLC Media Player, a small super-easy free app that can read both of the above formats (as well as lots of others) and seems respectful of your privacy, unlike RealPlayer which I recently removed because of its pushiness.

 

WinAmp supports FLV format.

 

RealPlayer has a "Download This Video" link that is fabulous and extremely easy to use! You can download pretty much any video, film, music, etc. To use it, all you have to do is click the little blue "Download This Video" box that comes on the screen (right above the video) for a few seconds when you're playing a video.

To access the settings for "Download This Video, just go into Tools, Preferences, and Download + Recording.

 

Thanks to you all guys, I got some good advise and I have now downloaded most clips what I want (so far, new lessons turn up time to time).

However, there are couple of clips from one user that caused problems wit all of them. I get a pop-up with the following message with yes/no buttons:

"This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users as flagged by YouTube's user community. To view this video, please verify that you are 18 years or older by logging in or signing up. Do you want to log in to access your account?"

I haven't got a foggiest what the user name and password refer to - I've tried signing in with Google account but that didn't work. The clip plays perfectly well on tbrowsers, I just cannot download it. I had no problem with most of the other clips belonging to this series, not any of the lessons by other users.

If anyone wants to have a go, here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/khmerschool#p/c/B14B2BAD4BEF7769/45/-pq-DxfZNjw

 

Register @ Youtube as that's where the message comes from though it makes me wonder who in their right mind would label that as adult content?:confused Top right

 

Not sure why your google account did not work. Try creating a new account on youtube.
I downloaded the vid from the link, had no problems. I'm using Firefox and used this to download.
Cheers..

 

I tried download the website also via keepvid.com but it couldn't find the server either.

I guess I have to create a new account but does that effect my current one? I'm using the private messaging to talk to my teacher for Q&A that is not relevant to everyone and I don't really want to lose the messages in my in-box.

 

I don't know why that is but it seemed that switching off the computer and getting back to download the file did the trick. Huh?

But now I have another problem: I found a complete free language course (two actually) from fsi.com: it's quite old (1966 & 1975) but what the heck - it's still better than nothing, right?

The problem is that each lesson, just a sound clip, is it's own Quicktime file and there are about... What's the best way to grab those? I guess there are other free lessons floating around the net, with other file formats but I hope that the programs, Audacity etc, that have been suggested here will dope with most of those.