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August 24, 2007

HOWTO: Download FLV videos from YouTube manually

Filed under: Blog — krkhan @ 8:37 pm

I’m well aware of the fact that this thing has been posted on various blogs countless times already; but if you haven’t noticed, YouTube has changed its page structure so that only a text-search of player2.swf?video_id= in the source code won’t yield the prolonged video_id. Instead, you now have to search for /watch_fullscreen?video_id= to locate the holy grail.

For those who’re new to this method, here’s what you have to do:

  • Open the YouTube video link for which you want to download the FLV.
  • Right-click anywhere on the page and click on ‘View (Page) Source’.
  • Press CTRL+F and search for the string: /watch_fullscreen?video_id=
  • Copy everything after the question mark until the end of quotes, as shown in the image below:

    YouTube video_id
    (Click to enlarge)

  • Type this in your address bar: https://www.youtube.com/get_video?[video_id you've just copied]
  • Hit Enter/Return, you’ll be offered a downloaded named get_video which is actually your desired FLV file. Save it somewhere locally and change its extension to .flv.

Here’s a list of players that you can use to play your downloaded FLV:

Bona fide :-) !

Tags: , , ,

18 Comments

  1. Isn’t adding ‘kiss’ before youtube before the vdo url easier to get the DL link?
    like for if you wanna get http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YWXpHl9sGk
    you just type http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=2YWXpHl9sGk

    Comment by Alee — August 25, 2007 @ 8:20 pm

  2. or is the emphasis on MANUALLY?

    Comment by Alee — August 25, 2007 @ 8:23 pm

  3. Didn’t know about the kiss ;-) . Nice! And yeah, the post would probably still serve its purpose as a tutorial for manual downloads :-) .

    Comment by krkhan — August 25, 2007 @ 8:43 pm

  4. I dunno why but kissyoutube’s not working anymore :( Looks like ill have to try out your method…

    Comment by Talal — September 18, 2007 @ 10:46 pm

  5. Another option would be to use real player 11 beta… it gives u the option to download the FLV based videos.

    Comment by Ali Zeeshan — September 27, 2007 @ 11:15 am

  6. according to me best method is to add url to savetube.com and then download it ..

    Comment by nishu — September 27, 2007 @ 3:46 pm

  7. good article
    but, i use – http://www.flashvideodownloader.org/

    Comment by anita — September 19, 2008 @ 8:33 pm

  8. Since version 0.9 VLC can play youtube videos just using the URL of the page you want see.

    Comment by charon — October 6, 2008 @ 1:37 am

  9. this doesn’t work …

    Comment by sophie — September 7, 2009 @ 10:47 am

  10. Youtube changed a bunch of its internal coding in 2009, the “watch_full” search method doesn’t work anymore

    PLEASE POST if you know the new method of finding the full download URL!

    Comment by asdf — November 19, 2009 @ 6:48 am

  11. Yeah, I’m love to know how to update my code now that watch_fullscreen is gone. Anyone?

    Comment by JR — November 23, 2009 @ 6:35 am

  12. Hi guys. I have just found out it does still work! I try only one video, but it works perfectly. There is only one change you need to do.

    Look for “t”: in source code and then use it in url: http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=%5Bnormal youtube id]&t=[t parametr]

    GL

    Comment by Alex — November 24, 2009 @ 3:14 pm

  13. Thanks for the new method Alex, I’ll try it out as soon as I get the chance.

    Comment by krkhan — November 26, 2009 @ 12:37 am

  14. Very nices article…

    Comment by saç ekimi — December 30, 2009 @ 3:15 pm

  15. I found the best way to get both the MP4 (HD) and FLV video formats.
    For HD use this : “http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=” & Youtube Video ID (?v=___________) & “&t=” & Youtube Video Signature (search for T in the source, and use that code) & “%3D&fmt=22”

    For FLV use the same method, but instead of & “%3D&fmt=22”, add & “%3D&fmt=5”

    Comment by Maarten — March 13, 2010 @ 9:22 pm

  16. I love watching videos online specially on Youtube. There are lots of music clips, movie clips and instructional videos on Youtube. I love em all.

    Comment by Randy Oshima — April 27, 2010 @ 8:25 am

  17. i use Youtube to watch Taylor Swift videos. I always watch movie clips on Youtube. What an awesome site. .

    Comment by Kevin Mitchell — April 29, 2010 @ 11:41 pm

  18. […] the video link in the flv format that you have to save locally with a .flv extention  This is a fairly simple manual method to download You Tube videos and it is absolutely […]

    Pingback by The ultimate and complete guide on how to download youtube videos — April 25, 2012 @ 9:17 pm

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