The web browser add-on for instance works right there where the videos are opened anyway: in the browser. Software video downloaders on the other hand offer cross-browser support and are usually better in managing and queuing downloads.

Live Downloader is a software program for the Windows operating system that can be used to capture streaming video from sites like Youtube, Dailymotion, Facebook or MySpace. The tool does not limit downloads to video content on the other hand as it also offers to download streaming music as well but most users will probably download video streams with it.

The software runs as a process in the background that monitors the incoming traffic of the computer system. It will automatically display a download window whenever a video or audio stream is identified in the scan. The download window contains a preview area and a download button to send the video to the download queue.

Live Downloader behaves different from other streaming video and audio downloaders as it does not have an option to download a video from an url that gets pasted into the application by the user.

The monitoring of the network traffic can be deactivated at anytime to avoid that the download windows show up when they are not needed. Another interesting option is to select to download all media automatically without displaying a notification window first.

Live Downloader is available for download at the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Microsoft operating systems including Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. (via Addictive Tips)

The second option does not seem to be available in this version of Riptiger. The last Riptiger setting is a slider that defines the compatibility mode which is by default set to off.

The downloading itself is handled automatically. This is a very comfortable way of downloading videos but it leads to a problem if the user does not want to download all videos but only selected ones. The only option in this case is to stop the download manually in the Riptiger interface.

Formats supported by Riptiger:

• Flash Video (HTTP and RTMP)
• Windows Media (HTTP, MMS and RTSP)
• Real Audio and Real Video (HTTP and RTSP)
• MPEG
• QuickTime
• Streaming MP3 (Shoutcast)

Riptiger is compatible with many popular video services such as Youtube, Dailymotion or Gametrailers. It does fail however to download videos from sites such as Vevo. Video urls can also be pasted manually in the application which might be interesting if automatic downloads have been turned off by the user.

Installation:

The Riptiger extracts to a setup.exe and a readme. Just start the setup and follow the onscreen instructions. The software can be registered by visiting the Buy menu in the applications’ interface. A click on Enter License Code will display the activation wizard screen with already filled out data. A click on Continue will register the program.

The automatic registration failed in our test. We had to visit the Riptiger website manually (link provided in the activation dialog) to create an activation code that we had to enter in the activation form.

The video downloader can be installed on 32-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well as 64-bit editions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Positive

• Comfortable automatic downloading
• Compatible with many formats

Negative

• No information about shortcuts to quickly turn on or off automatic downloading
• Barely any settings provided
• Limited version of Riptiger that does not offer video conversions, previews or advanced ripping options

There are many tools out there that are more comfortable than Riptiger. These tools might not support automatic downloads but they offer the user a better manageability and options. Riptiger is available for free today at the Giveaway of the Day website. The (very slow) developer website is available here.

Alternatives are for example the Download Helper add-on for Firefox

Batch downloading from Youtube works on pages with more than one video on a page but not from the search results. The Download All or Download button becomes only active on selected pages. Say you want to download all videos by one publisher. To do so you open the publisher profile at Youtube and click on the Videos link that links to all videos. Only that page activates the download all button which was inactive on the profile page.

1-Click YouTube Batch Downloader is a great application for hardcore Youtube fans who also want to download a lot of videos to their computer. All videos are downloaded into the My Documents\My YouTube folder sorted by username.

Downloads continue even when browsing away from the page where the download was initiated. One thing that is missing is a stop button. It is not possible to stop or pause the downloads unless the application is closed completely.

Videos can be downloaded by pasting their url in the tool. If you want to download more than one file you can use the queue manager or provide the url of the Youtube playlist which will download the videos that you want from it. Videos are automatically converted into another format (avi, mpg, mp4, psp, 3gp, mov..) after download if you choose so.

Some functions of the utility are still experimental but very promising. Users can log into Youtube for instance to download private videos from the website. The video capture function will monitor a network card which will automatically download videos from the supported websites to a folder on your hard drive.

Specific templates can be chosen to convert videos. Templates are available for (S)VCD, DVD, iPOD, PSP plus several more. I experienced one crash during my test but other than that the software is running solid and stable.

The website viddownloader converts the videos to avi before it displays a download link. This is probably not the most elegant solution if you want to download hundreds of videos but it works fine if you only want to download a few videos. You supply the url of the video that you want to download and viddownloader does the rest automatically and displays a download link afterwards. It supports the following sites at the moment: Youtube, Break, Dailymotion, Myspace and Pornotube.

The conversion took just a few minutes and depends on the length of the video mainly. Not sure if video conversions are queued or how viddownloader handles several requests at the same time. Download speeds were fine as well. I was able to download with about 100K which is ok for videos of that size. The flv video was about 7 megabytes in size while the converted avi was almost triple that size with 19 megabytes.

Enter Google Video Downloader. This online script does the following. If you find a video at video.google.com that you would like to download all you need to do is copy the url the video is located and paste it into a text field called Decode Url on their site.

A script automatically converts the url and displays the download link and the watch it link. If you click download you can download the film to your computer. Please note that the movies are
in flv format, so you will need a movie player that is capable of playing those files. They provide a link to one on the results page.

Head over to dev2.traxio.net/projects/googlevideo/and take a look if this concept sounds interesting to you.