On Downloading Video from YouTube

As a teacher I frequently encounter videos on YouTube that I think would be great to use with students, but because of firewalls am unable to use directly from the web.

There are a number of ways that videos can be downloaded from YouTube to enable their use directly from your computer. I tend to use Zamzar, following the process described toward the end this post. I like Zamzar because

• The site provides the facility for the video files to be converted and downloaded in a number of different formats. This is important as not all media players will play all file types.
• When a file is ready, a link to the file is sent by email, allowing the file to be picked up and downloaded from school, within a 24 hour time period after reciept.

Today in my feeds this post by Tony Karrer, points to another option, a "bookmarklet" that can added to the links bar of Firefox, or added to favourites in IE, and then used to download YouTube Videos directly as mP4s, when visiting the host page. A nice tool and shortcut for anyone with Quick Time installed.