When it comes to downloading movies and videos from the Internet, users have lots of options. They can install browser add-ons like Download Helper for Firefox, the myriad tool reviewed in our guide to download YouTube videos or third party programs like Freemake Video Downloader. I reviewed the program for the first time back in March of this year and came to the conclusion that it was a great program even though it supported only a few dozen sites. While it supported the most popular video hosts such as YouTube, Facebook Video or MTV, it failed to download videos from many other sites that hosted videos on their servers.
The developers have raised the bar considerable in the latest version; The number of supported video hosting sites has been raised from less than 50 to more than ten thousand.
The new version comes with additional enhancements like the ability to stop downloads and resume interrupted video downloads or a searchable and sortable download history. Users need to pay attention to the installation of the program as it tries to install a toolbar that replaces search and homepage of supported web browsers. It is however easy to block this from happening during the installation process.
Freemake Video Downloader can install plugins into Firefox and Google Chrome that add buttons to the browser interface. These act as a direct send to buttons to download movies and videos that are currently playing in the active browser window. The plugins are optional though, the program can also be used directly by pasting urls into the program interface.
The video downloader displays either a download dialog to the user or, if one click downloads have been selected, starts the download of the video right away. It is possible to specify some parameters in this case, like the preferred video quality or download directory.
Users who want more control can keep the default settings which displays a video download window whenever a video is about to be downloaded. Here it is then possible to select a video quality – if multiple video qualities are provided by the site and if it is supported by the software, the action (download video, rip music) and save directory. The following screenshot is an example of how the download window looks when a YouTube video has been selected for download.
It is not necessary to use the browser add-ons to download videos. You can alternatively copy and paste video urls directly into the application to download those videos. Another interesting option is the ability to add account information to the video downloader. Supported right now are YouTube, Facebook, Vkontakte, Nicovideo, Yandex and Mail.ru at the moment.
The application is a comfortable video downloader for Windows. Is there anything missing? Well, an option to add multiple videos would have been nice. And Firefox users may wonder why they cannot move the download icon in the browser. You can still read my old review of the application for further information.
Windows users can download the latest version of Freemake Video Downloader from the developer site. It is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.
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im stay still with Jdownloader for this.
Very good but very slow program.
I can’t remember what codec I was converting to, but I had a “freemake” logo / banner in one of the videos the last time I used Freemake.
Switched to XMedia Recode and found it was much faster, better quality, greater customization available, and is in fact free and doesn’t add its own advertising to your videos.
Rick, the downloader is not watermarking downloads. The same company has also created a video converter, maybe that’s the program you are referring to.
Tried few downloaders and converters but find Freemake the easiest and best so far.