So if you have got your hand on your one of the most favorite video track or clip, and now you want to download it on your computer because you want to perform some editing, or simply because its better than playing it online again and again? If thats the case, then this tutorial will teach you how to download and play videos from Youtube.com

There are countless ways of doing it. Since Youtube has been around for a while and have attained a top position in viewer’s ranking since the begining, developers have been working on several applications, web and desktop based to help the users with their experience on youtube. We’ll discuss some of it here.

Web Based Services

Vixy

Its simple and easy to use. All you have to do is copy the URL/address of the youtube video shown in your browser and paste it there. It will show you the option of downloading in (DivX + MP3), MOV, MP4, 3GP and MP3 format. Simply choose whatever you like and the download will start.

Easy YouTube Video Downloader

Its a firefox extension that would display a download button with every youtube video. All you have to do is to click it, and the download would begin. Piece of cake

SaveTube

Another simple paste and download tool in the vein of Downloader9 or KeepVid, SaveTube works fine but, like VideoDownloadX, is a minefield of ads to navigate.

Downloader9

Downloader9 allows you to download videos not only from youtube, but from myspace, facebook and metacafe. By using it, you can generate a FLV link for your video and can use any FLV player (Which we’ll discuss shortly) to play it.

Desktop Applications

Moyea YouTube

The free version of this app simply downloads YouTube vids as FLV files, while the paid app lets you convert them to MP4, 3GP, AVI, MOV, MPG, MKV, FLV, MP3, MKA, WAV, AC3, and M4A.

Videoslurp

It includes a built-in browser that would allow you to navigate to your favorite youtube video and download it with one click.

Orbit Downloader

Its a download manager, which could also be used to download videos in flv format from various sites including social networks, like facebook. It places an arrow with every downloadable video, which represents the downloading sign. Just click it, and you’ll have the video on your computer.

There are also plenty of Firefox addons available which could help you to download youtube videos easily with a single click. Browse through the directory to find more.

How to Play the FLV file format?

If you can’t play the FLV file, or you’re hearing only the audio but not getting any video, then this probably means that you don’t have the required drivers to do so. Now the question is how to install that?

If you start installing all the drivers one-by-one which you might require in every day use of your computer then it would take a long time to gather all the necessary files. Instead, a better approach would be to install a codec pack which would take care of everything.

For that purpose, I’d recommend to download K-Lite Media Codec Pack. This would install a new media player on your computer, which would be similar to the Windows Media Player classic. It would potentially have almost all the codecs you could possibly require, including the FLV codec required to play downloaded youtube videos.

Hope that it would help