Best websites, add-ons and plugins to download online video

Get ready to get angry at the world, because you are going to if you start dabbling with software to download online video. There are lots of people in the online community who have gone through the heartache, and it goes something like this. You search and search for weeks to find a good video downloader. It downloads from some of the sites that the others do not, and then one of two things happens. The first is that they start disallowing downloads from certain sites because the websites involved have started kicking back (which is a very annoying occurrence). Or worse still is when you have been happily downloading from the tool for a few weeks (or even months) and then one day you download the video but it is flagged as a virus. This means that the website/tool has been compromised and you are forced to stop using it (even though you really, really want to keep using it). Here are a few links to websites and tools you may use to download videos online.

VidDownloader

http://www.viddownloader.com/

This is a tool you can use to download videos from the YouTube website. It is pretty quick and has other features you can play with too.

VideoDownloader

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/

This is a rather self explanatory FireFox extension. It is an extension that allows you to download a bunch of different videos from various places. It works by pulling away most of what is loaded into your browser. It is also handy if you have an FLV player too so that you can check what has been downloaded without having to convert it first.

Kcoolonline

http://www.kcoolonline.com/

Just a few months ago this website was claiming it could download from 98 video sites. It now claims it can download from 288+ video websites. Normally the video websites get in touch with the download sites and tell them to pack it in, but this web master has found a way of adding more and more video websites to its library and is still going. It even tries twice if your video will not download from a site. It puts you on another page and lays out any further options you may have for getting videos from the site. In other words, this is probably the video downloader that you have been looking for all this time. This is probably the video downloader you clicked on this article to find. Let us hope that the same web master keeps the website and that it is not shut down or taken over by a morally bankrupt company.

Zamzar

http://zamzar.com/url/

This is a free web app that you can use to download videos off of the Internet. You can convert them to into something such as AVI, 3GP, MPEG, MP4, MOV. It also has the cute function of converting audio and images too. It will even take a swipe at a few document types. It is easy enough to use as all you have to do is enter the URL, choose your format and away you go.

Download.uzeik

http://download.uzeik.net/eng.php

This is a website that allows you to download FLV videos from sites such as YouTube. It is not a bad downloader and it is based in another country so may not have the restrictions that your other converters have.

Media Converter

http://www.mediaconverter.org/

This is converter where you have to create an account first, which is a pain and which makes it hard to trust. But, if you have an email address that you don’t mind getting spam to then enter it into this online tool. It has a very limited range of websites that it is willing to download and/or convert from. You can do a few without creating an account sometimes.

Hey! Watch

http://heywatchencoding.com/

This is a rather quick tool that is able to turn your online videos into a HD format very quickly. You are able to download and convert videos from a number of websites and it is easy to use too. You can even download them onto things such as your website server or the cloud. You do not need to download the video to your computer or mobile device.

KeepVid

http://keepvid.com/

This is a nice enough video downloader that also has an ultra-quick download process for the most popular online videos. This is handy for when news breaks such as when the Russian meteors were hitting or when Miley Cyrus was pulling her publicity stunt. The popular video downloads are so quick because they leave the most popular videos on the server so that the recording time is eliminated. Otherwise you may just enter your URL into the tool and click the download button (you have to get the most popular videos from search engine results).

Editor’s Note: Kate Funk is a freelance writer at http://www.aussiessay.com. She is mainly focusing on technology, gadgets and all the latest trends which are interesting for networking enthusiasts.