Since its humble beginnings in 2005, YouTube has become one of the most visited websites in the world. After being acquired by the Google Corporation a year after it has founded, the video sharing website has become a multi-million dollar site with billions of views every year.
However with the enormous amount of videos that are being shared on the website, people often wish to save a video to their computer or transfer it onto a mobile device (such as an iPod). The tech world has been working on ways of downloading YouTube videos and has created various YouTube downloading software, which they have called YouTube downloaders.
There are two main types of downloader: video and audio. If you want to download the audio file and not the video (of a song for example) then the audio downloaders are what you want – if you wish to download the full length video, then you will have to select a video downloader.
Most of the YouTube download websites that exist offer both video and audio download options, which means that you can use one website or piece of software for whatever you wish to do. Be sure that you select the file type that you wish to download – .MP3 will be the most commonly used for audio, whereas .FLV or .MP4 will usually be the most common for video.
You will use more internet bandwidth downloading a whole video than you will if you download an MP3 file. This means that if you are on a limited download provider (many mobile devices have download limits or fair-usage policies) then you are better off not downloading the accompanying video.
If you are downloading any sort of content from the internet it is always a good idea to check out the copyright notices on the website. You will find that the majority of music videos uploaded to YouTube are owned by large companies (such as Sony) which prohibit you from downloading and saving their videos. That means that you will either have to purchase the song itself from a digital store such as iTunes, or just listen to is on YouTube. Downloading videos off of YouTube is not always illegal, which is why these types of software are allowed to exist.
You will find a variety of YouTube downloaders on the internet by searching on a search engine. It is usually a good idea to use a website that has a high Google rating, as those are the well established websites which are generally more trustworthy. It’s a good idea to use online YouTube downloading services rather than having to download software, as you never know what sort of viruses are lurking in downloaded files.
One of the reasons that people are reluctant to download videos straight from YouTube is that they do are unhappy with the style of the videos that are downloaded. This is often the case with music videos, which have long introductions – if you are just downloading the audio file, you can be listening to an instrumental or silent piece for a long time. One way to deal with this is to download a piece of software such as Audacity, which enables you to delete sections of the file and export it as an MP3. This means that you will be able to remove any long introductions or parts of the music that you do not wish to listen to.
As stated above, you will want to check the copyright and usage terms of the video that you are attempting to download. The majority of YouTube downloaders do not limit the videos that you can download, so if you do not check on the legality of what you are doing, you could be breaking Youtube’s terms and conditions policy. If you are unsure if an independent video creator will allow you to use their video or audio, you may want to contact them on YouTube to ask.
