Inspirated

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:

  
  (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:

• MPlayer (personal favorite — cross-platform)
• VLC Media Player (cross-platform)
• ffdshow-tryouts codecs (Windows)
• FLV Player (Windows)

Bona fide :-) !