Alternative to VIXY.net (capturing from youtube)?

[jerrylynnb]

I notice that lately every time I try to capture a youtube video I get the following error:

Error: URL resolve error. (YouTube.com is down??)

But, of course, youtube is NOT down and I can go straightaway and play the addressed youtube video directly with no problems.

VIXY.net used to always work, but, for some time now I can't capture any video to my PC from youtube using VIXY.net. So, is there yet another method for capturing selected videos from youtube to your PC?

[Baldrick]

Try just google for "youtube online converter" for other online youtube download converters like http://www.mediaconverter.org/ . Or use a tool for it like Vdownloader, Orbit Downloader, etc.

[jerrylynnb]

Thanks, they worked without the problems from vixy.net.

I also notice that some degradation, from what is viewed by playing it from firefox (which uses the adobe flash player online), is introduced in the conversion process (either to avi, mpg, or flv) . It occurs to me that maybe it would be better to capture the video AS IT IS PLAYING onto your harddrive, and that way not suffer any loss of fidelity. Is there any background application that could transfer the video to your harddrive as it is being played in the same format as it exists? Or, alternatively, is there a program to do a straight download ONLY and no conversion, and then allow playing the downloaded file using adobe's flashplayer? The idea is to not lose video fidelity from what you get by playing it from youtube.

Since the youtube videos don't have a file extension, is that format documented and supported by any offline video players? Or is there an offline adobe flash player that can play youtube files after they are downloaded AS IS onto your harddrive?

I guess there is a whole lot of technology here and it may take a while to get caught up. I am amazed at even being able to watch these youtube videos at all, much less seeing that some of them have pretty good video fidelity over a DSL connection.