Video portals are definitely some of the most popular websites on the Internet. Portals like Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Myspace or Hulu provide access to millions of videos on their site. All videos are usually streamed in various qualities directly in the web browser.
Many users would like to download selected movies from those video portals to be able to watch the videos again on their computer or process them further by burning them to DVD or putting them on mobile devices.
Most video portals on the other hand do not provide the means to download the videos on their websites directly. Some like Youtube have started experimenting by enabling download access to selected videos on their sites but it can generally be said that videos cannot be downloaded directly.
There are basically three options to download videos from video portals who are not offering direct download links:
• Web Services
• Browser Add-ons, plugins, bookmarklets
• Desktop applications
All three options have their distinct advantages but also disadvantages which we will outline in their sections. The following part of the article will list the most popular services, add-ons and desktop applications to download videos from the Internet.
Web Services
Most web services that provide the means to download videos from video portals use the same layout. The user has to copy a video url from a supported video portal and paste it into a form that will automatically download the video for the user.
This outlines the disadvantage of this method clearly. The user has to copy and paste urls which might be not a problem for the occasional download but is cumbersome for users who want to download dozens of videos at the same time.
They do however provide the only way of downloading videos from the Internet without having to install software on a computer system.
ClipNabber offers download possibilities to about one hundred video portals. All the user needs to do is to copy the url from the video portal and paste it into the web form on the Clip Nabber website. The site gives examples on how to download videos from all supported websites aiding first
