We have seen our fair share of applications that offer to download Youtube videos, both as browser extensions and as desktop applications. Some, like the excellent Firefox add-on Download Helper are still working while others have stopped working or vanished from view.
The video player and organizer Miro has not been mentioned a lot, if at all, when it comes to downloading videos from Youtube. That’s surprising as it offers all the bells and whistles needed to not only play videos but also to download and organize them.
Miro combines an elegant interface, compatibility with many popular videos formats and the option to download most videos from the Internet under its hood.
It begins by downloading Open Source application Miro from the official website. Miro can change the homepage and default search engine during installation, users who do not want this should pay attention to the installation process.
The first stop should be the preferences which are located under the File menu at the top menu bar. The two main settings that may need to be changed can be found under Folders and Disk Space.
The video download directory is set to the user directory by default. Some users may want to change that to another location.
Even more important than that is the disk space preference. Miro stores videos only for six days by default which may not be enough for most users. It is possible to select a different retention time up to never which would essentially mean that videos are not deleted automatically by the application.
It is actually pretty simply to add a website to Miro. All it takes is to click on Sidebar > New Website in the top menu. A small form is displayed that accepts website urls. Users who want to download videos from Youtube need to enter youtube.com. It is possible to add other video sites such as Dailymotion or Gametrailers, but downloads are not supported on all of them.
Miro adds the video portal under websites in the left sidebar. A click on the website opens it directly in Miro. A small header bar with controls is displayed on top of the website. Here it is for instance possible to navigate back and forth, load the homepage again, open the page in the default browser or to download the video.
All that users needs to do to download a video is to visit the video page and click the Download this video button afterwards. Miro will then download the video automatically from Youtube.
It is now theoretically possible to load another video. All videos that get downloaded by Miro are stored in the video library.
Downloaded videos can be searched or sorted in numerous ways including date, name, size or time. Miro offers additional options, for instance to create playlists of downloaded videos or to convert videos into a different format.
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