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.

4K Video Downloader is a free software program for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux based operating systems that supports downloading online videos from the four sites YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and Dailymotion.

Video urls need to be copied to the clipboard before they can be pasted into the program via the Paste url button in the program interface.

The program displays download information immediately after the button has been pressed.

A thumbnail image of the video, its name, playing duration and link are displayed at the top. All available video qualities are displayed underneath. This ranges from low resolution videos all the way up to 4k videos if supported on site.

The only other option available is to change the default save directory. A click on the download button starts the download.

This is indicated int the main program interface. Each video that is added to the program is displayed there. A progress bar indicates the download progress of each individual video.

Videos that have been downloaded successfully can be played right away, either by hovering the mouse over the video information and selecting play, or right-clicking the video and selecting play from the context menu.

The context menu links to additional features that include opening the folder the video has been downloaded to or pausing and resuming video downloads.

And that’s basically the functionality of the whole program. When you look at what is offered, you probably will notice the lack of features that would make the program more comfortable, like automatic recognition of video urls or configuring a specific quality setting as the default.

On the plus side, it works not only on Windows but Linux and Mac computers as well. You can download the latest version of the video downloader from the official project website.

Comfortable means that it should not be complicated to download videos, or even better, that the process of selecting and downloading videos is integrated into the workflow.

FreeMake Video Downloader is a free program to download videos from the Internet. The software supports more than 40 different video sites, the usual suspects, Youtube, Facebook or Google Video are on the list, as are other video portals such as Dailymotion, MTV, Veoh, Megavideo and a good dozen adult oriented video sites.

Video Downloader is a standalone program for Windows, that offers Chrome and Firefox web browser integration in the form of add-ons which are automatically installed during installation on the Windows PC (unless unselected).

It is still possible to use the program without the browser extensions, but the video url would then need to be copied into the application window manually to download videos.

The browser add-ons place a button in the interface that sends the active url to the video downloader.

The main interface lists the downloaded videos with their playing time, size, video format and a small thumbnail. From here it is possible to play them directly in the system’s default video player for the format and to open their download folder on the local hard drive.

A popup window in the main program interface is displayed when a video is send to the application via one of the browser plug-ins, or if a web video address is pasted directly into the program.

The video downloader displays all available quality settings for the video, along with their resolution, size and audio encoding.

It is possible to switch from a pure video downloading mode to extracting only the audio of the video (ideal for ripping mp3 from Youtube videos for instance) or to convert the video after downloading to another video or audio format. Available for selection are among others mp3, mkv and avi.

The download popup may be fine if you download a video occasionally; That changes if you download dozens of video on a day. It is possible to bypass the download selection screen by activating the one-click download mode in the upper right corner of the screen.

Here it is possible to select a quality level and optionally if the video should be converted after download. These settings are then used whenever a video is downloaded by the program.

It is then a matter of clicking on the browser plugin button to download the videos. Everything else is handled by the application in the background.

The options have settings to hide and lock adult videos. Hiding means that the downloaded videos do not appear in the video listing, locking enables parental controls which blocks adult videos from being downloaded a password is entered.

A proxy can be configured under Connections, and it is furthermore possible to enter account information for some video sites. Accounts are necessary to download private videos from the sites.

The program is comfortable to use, especially if one of the browser plugins is used in conjunction with the one-click video download mode.

The biggest limitation is the number of sites. Browser add-ons like Download Helper for Firefox top the 40+ video sites supported by the free video downloader by hundreds of sites.

Windows users can download the latest version of Freemake Video Downloader from the developer website. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.

VDownloader falls into the desktop application category. The free version of the program, there is a paid version as well, offers video searching, playing, downloading and converting.

The application is pretty easy to use. A click on Search in the left sidebar opens all video search options. It is possible to search Youtube, Dailymotion, Yahoo Video and Google by keyword, playlist or username, and some for personal videos.

Those portals are the only video sites supported by the search. The application itself supports way more than that. Several other video portals can be browsed via the Web button that is also available in the sidebar, and clipboard monitoring ensures that users who prefer to use their web browser can make use of the downloader as well. Back to video search.

VDownloader searches all sites at once, the down arrow next to the search button can be clicked on to only search one of the available video hosting sites.

Videos that have been found by the search are shown with thumbnails, a small site icon that indicates where they are hosted, their name, a few words of their description and Download and Play now buttons.

A click on Play now opens a small window in which the video can be played directly. The standard site controls, like pausing, skipping ahead or muting are available. It is likely that the application uses Internet Explorer’s rendering engine for that, which means that it will work if IE can play videos.

A click on the download button opens a save as window which is used to select a download directory for the video. The software can convert videos automatically with avi being selected by default. Other formats include mp3, 3gp, device specific formats for Apple’s iPad or iPhone, and resolution specific formats.

All videos that are selected for download are added to the download queue which is accessible via the Activity sidebar button.

All downloads are listed with their title, originating video site, download status, total size, and a progress bar. Two videos are downloaded consecutively by default, which can be changed in the options.

The settings of the video downloader contain some interesting options. The program monitors the Windows clipboard for video urls which are automatically pasted in the download form of the activity monitor. That makes it a little bit easier to download videos from external sources, especially since there is an option to automatically download those videos (needs to be activated).

Another interesting option is the ability to integrate Youtube, Facebook and Megavideo accounts which makes the videos of the account searchable and downloadable.

The Web button opens a basic web browser to browse supported video portals. Available are about 25 different video portals that can be browsed directly.

It is necessary to be on the video page to download the video which does not have to be playing. Several options of the video downloader are only active in the commercial version, which includes access to a video history, scheduler, batch downloading videos, download of full HD videos or local video conversion.

The free version of VDownloader is available for download at the developer website. It tries to install the Ask Toolbar during installation which means that users need to pay attention to the installation to avoid this if they do not want the toolbar on their system. Compatibility information are not provided on the developer homepage, the software worked fine under Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

All Video Downloader is a handy tool for Windows PCs that can download videos from more than 280 different video portals. The list includes the whois who of the online video world, from Youtube and Dailymotion over MSN Video and MySpace to Megavideo and Nationalgeographic.

The software supports single and batch downloads from video sites. Downloads need to be added manually in the form of urls. The easiest way to do that is to copy and paste urls into the application.

One advantage of All Video Downloader is the ability to convert videos after download. Available output formats and containers are avi, mp3, DVD, iPod and other device compatible formats or mp4. The convert is based on FFmpeg and offers a lot of advanced output options.

All Video Download is a handy application. It could use an option to monitor the clipboard for supported video urls to optimize and speed up the process a bit.

Interested users can download All Video Downloader from the developer site. The software supports plugins, explanations on how to create plugins are offered at the website as well.

A browser integrated alternative is the excellent Download Helper extension for Firefox which supports even more sites.

A software alternative is the excellent Freemake Video Downloader which in its latest version supports more than ten thousand video hosting sites.

Download Media Bar is an unobtrusive extension that can be used to download media from supported websites. A popular example are the video hosting websites Youtube and Gametrailers. The extension adds a very small overlay right below the playing video that contains options to download the video directly (in the case of Youtube) or to send it to the media downloading service Safefrom if downloads are not directly supported.

A small tooltip explains the functionality of each button. Buttons are only shown if the feature is supported. For Youtube all buttons are displayed (to download directly or to send the url to safefrom), for Gametrailers only the second button is displayed.

A click on the direct download button opens the save file window in the Opera browser to save the media to the local computer or open it directly in a compatible program.

Download Media Bar works with a lot of sites, especially since it is possible to send links to Sendfrom which supports dozens of media hosting sites.

Download Media Bar is only compatible with Opera 11 and available for direct installation at the Opera Extensions repository.

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 Google Video and take a look if this concept sounds interesting to you.

Update: Google since then has retired their own video service after purchasing and heavily promoting YouTube. The video hosting site since then has become the most popular, and lots of video downloaders have been published since then. Here is a short selection of tools that we have reviewed in the past:

Google Chrome Youtube Video Downloader – A video downloader for the Chrome web browser that is integrating the download capabilities right into the browser window.

Bulk Youtube Video Downloader For Firefox – A similar program for the Firefox browser that you can use to download multiple videos at once.

You can also check out our YouTube video downloader overview that lists dozens of web browser extensions and desktop applications to download YouTube videos.