If you are trying to download videos and always get stuck at YouTube downloader programs, don't worry, just Firebug it!
The amazing browser Mozilla Firefox is not a simple browser, but a rich and helpful tool for web developers and programmers. Among its extensions we can find one that may upset some world wide portals, I present you Firebug. Firebug "integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page".
These days I was trying to download videos from YouTube using some programs that claim to do that easily. However, I got stuck all the time! The programs really didn't work at all. So I decide to have a look at YouTube site through Firebug tool under Mozilla Firefox. There was the key! YouTube videos are "hidden" on different servers and URLs. It's speculation but I believe this is why downloader programs can't do the trick, they are not able to reach those servers and URLs. Using Firebug I could download my favourite videos properly.
First you have to download and install Mozilla Firefox. When finished, install Firebug on Firefox. Then restart the browser and be sure you have this icon at the browser bottom right corner:
To start working with Firebug and YouTube videos you need to access the YouTube site first. Then, just click on Firebug's green icon to open its tool panel. Now you have something like this:
Inside Firebug's panel you can debug Javascripts, inspect Html tags, explore the Html DOM tree, watch the XmlHttpRequest asynchronous requests and even know how long does every object on the page take to be downloaded by the browser. It's really amazing! Now as you were introduced to Firebug, let's see how to download your favourite YouTube videos.
Search for your video at YouTube.com and then click on it to start watching. Be sure that is this video you want to download. Now comes Firebug magic! Click on its green icon to open the tool panel. There is a tab named "Net", select it. This tab shows every object on the page and its respective download time. Now just hit Ctrl+F5 to refresh the page and see each object being downloaded by the browser.
Look at the red arrow (it's my arrow). There it is, your favourite video waiting for you to be downloaded. Can you see the real video URL? No more words, let's download the video. Right click the line where you see "get_video" followed by a weird URL and then hit "Open in new tab". Wow, Firefox want me to save a FLV (Flash Video) file? Yes, just do it.
Wait until the download is finished. The last step is rename the downloaded file from "get_video" to "youfilename.flv".
That's all folks!
Enjoy!
