Downloading a YouTube File into avi Format?

[solarblast]

I'd like to get the video file at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2gNMhXJq4A&feature=related> down and into avi. I'm told that VideodownloadHelper from Firefox* may be of some help. It produces an flv file. Possibly a program called "Super" by eRightSoft might get it to avi. Is there any easier way using other tools?

[guns1inger]

http://vixy.net/

[solarblast]

Does this do it in all one shot and is it free?

[guns1inger]

Yes and Yes

[primus_fan2001]

http://www.zamzar.com/

[solarblast]

I decided to try vixy on the internet. It's still cranking on my 2min 20 sec file. Interesting concept of doing it by giving vixy the url, and letting it do it all without me installing the program. I like the idea, but I think it's been close to 45 minutes working on it. It may just be a busy night. Still, I can't complain about that.

[Soopafresh]

Try Vdownloader as well. No install required and does a very nice job converting to XVID AVI

[solarblast]

I just let it go and finally fell asleep. After 7 hours, I see, it still was stuck.

[solarblast]

The videodownloader page does not show any way to provide a link for the conversion. I did find <http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php>. After 20 minutes, I see nothing produced or even a progress report of what's happening.

I downloaded vixybeta.net and installed it. It wants some net facility now. End of trail for me on that install.

Ah, a retry of vixy gives a progress report now. Well, it created a 6.7M avi file, but winamp doesn't seem to quite know what to do with it. The name of the file produced was some long complicated string, so I reduced it to something readable. I hope, and don't really expect, that has anything to do with this problem. Well, back to pondering this conversion process.

[solarblast]

No progress. I went back to installing vkxy.net and it needs something called Net Framework. I have no clue about what that is.

VideodownloadHelper is a plugin for Firefox, but I have SeaMonkey. I'm not terribly excited about changing my browser for the sake of one plug-in. Zanacar may have worked, but I have reservations about sending the resulting file to my e-mail address.

Vixy.net converts the url to DivX + MP3, AVI, but is that the "standard" AVI? The result certainly didn't work in Winamp or WMP.

[Lawbringer]

No progress. I went back to installing vkxy.net and it needs something called Net Framework. I have no clue about what that is.

VideodownloadHelper is a plugin for Firefox, but I have SeaMonkey. I'm not terribly excited about changing my browser for the sake of one plug-in. Zanacar may have worked, but I have reservations about sending the resulting file to my e-mail address.

Vixy.net converts the url to DivX + MP3, AVI, but is that the "standard" AVI? The result certainly didn't work in Winamp or WMP.

.Net Framework 2.0 comes with Windows Vista, or, alternatively, you could download it directly from Microsoft. It's required to run applications written in .Net.

As for AVI format, there really is no such thing as a "standard" AVI. AVI is just a shell, and you can pretty much have anything inside it. I am grossly over-simplifying, of course, but I don't think an extended lecture on codecs, encoding, and all that other stuff is what you want or care about.
Basically, "DivX" is an encoding format that you need a key to decode. You could either download the DivX Codec from this site, or download and install VideoLan (or VLC player as it is now called), which should play DivX file out of the box.

Hope this helps

[t0nee1]

You can use CamStudio, it saves to avi.....use MPC or WMP to play it...

[solarblast]

It appears that VLC and CamStudio are programs that will make the conversion I seek, correct? That is, if I'm playing the YouTube video above, they will record it. Otherwise, if I want to use vixy.net, then I need to bring down Framework from MS.

[Lawbringer]

It appears that VLC and CamStudio are programs that will make the conversion I seek, correct? That is, if I'm playing the YouTube video above, they will record it. Otherwise, if I want to use vixy.net, then I need to bring down Framework from MS.

VLC is not really a conversion tool

[solarblast]

CamStudio sure is. Thanks! Finally, I now have a copy of the CNN video above. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to set the regions, and sound, but it worked quite well.

The only comment I have is that when you save the resulting avi file and there is a file by that name already there, it just saves the file without asking if it should be replaced. That could be a bit dangerous. It would be good if it put out a message during the save that the file is being downloaded as it progresses. My file turned out to be 60M, and I was puzzled when I looked at the details to see a size of 0. As I was puzzling that over, it suddenly changed to 60M. Interestingly, the file that vixy.net produce, which didn't work, was 6.7M.

The program features some interesting options for annotating the resulting video, sound source, etc.

[SCDVD]

The videodownloader page does not show any way to provide a link for the conversion.

It transfers the link automatically. All you have to do is load VDownloader first and then go to the page in your browser with the video in it and and select your URL line. Click "Edit" and then click "Copy". You don't need to paste the URL into VDownloader; it's smart enough to recognize the copy and puts the URL into VDownloader.

[solarblast]

Oh, well. CamStudio works for me.