Otherwise, there are many tools to convert your videos. DownloadHelper can do that but only if you’ve installed theįFMpeg or Mencoder libraries-a process that requires some knowledge of the Terminal application and the wherewithal to track down the correct library builds. However, if it’s a Flash file you may wish to convert it so you can play it in iTunes and on your iOS devices. If that file is in the MPEG-4 format, you’re set. If a site offers only one version of the video-MPEG-4 or Flash-you’ll see the option to download only that file. Choose one of the MPEG-4 versions (standard or high definition, for example) and it downloads to your Mac, ready to play in iTunes, QuickTime Player, or another video player of your choosing. If you’re looking at a YouTube video (the extension supports downloads from many different sites) you’ll see multiple listings-some in Flash format and others in MPEG-4 format. Start playing a video and click on the icon and you’ll see one or more listings for the video.

Once you’ve installed the extension, a DownloadHelper icon appears in Firefox’s address bar at the top of the browser window, or in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window (we found different behavior on different Macs).

Speaking of Firefox, its users have a better option thanks to the freeĭownloadHelper extension. For those files, turn to Firefox or a third-party tool. Unfortunately, you can’t download MPEG-4 files using this method. As mentioned earlier, you can then play this file with a third-party tool. Option-double-click on it and it will download to your Mac as an flv file. In the list of links below look for an entry of several megabytes that appears to be loading. In this window you’ll see the name of the video followed by the word YouTube. Press Command-Option-A to produce Safari’s Activity window. For example, navigate to a YouTube video you want to capture and start it playing. If you’re using Safari you’ll find that there’s no obvious command for capturing streaming YouTube videos, but it can be done with the browser’s built-in tools provided that you’re downloading a Flash file. Easy or difficult, it’s possible to capture just about any video on the Web. Perian plug-in), you must convert these to a format compatible with iOS devices. VideoLAN client (or in QuickTime Player if you’ve installed the While you can play these videos in a browser or with a third-party application such as the However, many websites continue to offer videos encoded in the Flash (flv) format. For example, it’s fairly easy to download MPEG-4-encoded content and play those videos on your Mac and iOS devices because MPEG-4 is natively supported on these devices. Capturing Web video can be a one- or multi-step process, depending on how the original content is encoded and protected.

How to download a youtube video mac