Once and Still a Techie Weblog

Convert and Download Flash Videos Quick and Easy

If you want to watch a flash video like those found on YouTube, DailyMotion, or Metacafe offline, you’re going to want to download it to your computer.

Video Downloadhelper

Firefox has a great free plugin that can help you do that called Video DownloadHelper which is at version 3.2.2 as of this writing.

After installing the addon, which works on Firefox 1.5-3.0.*, visit the URL with the flash video like http://youtube.com/watch?v=J7JmsMMIR4Y, for example. You should see Video Downloadhelper’s icon on your Firefox toolbar at the top which normally looks like this turn into this . Clicking on the drop-down arrow to it’s right will reveal the downloadable flash video(s) represented by a randomly assigned number for each flash video. Clicking that number will begin downloading the .flv format video(s).

A feature recently added on Sept. 11, 2008 is the ability to automatically convert the flv video to avi, mpeg or mp4 format. For more information on how to do this, you can visit the Video Downloadhelper website here.

Vixy.net

Another free way to get a flash video converted and downloaded to your PC is through the website vixy.net. They provide a service allowing you to convert flv videos to AVI, MOV, MP4, MP3 or 3GP online.

At the website you will find a text box where you simply type or paste in the URL of the page with the flash video, choose the format you want to convert it to then click Start. It’s painless and did I say it’s free?

Vixy.net also has a desktop version of their converter which you can download and install on your computer. Take note that the download is a beta which will expire on September 30, 2008 for the Windows (XP or Vista) version and August 26 for the MacOSX version.