As you may have already figured out, YouTube does not have any way for you capture videos from its site. There are a bunch of microsoft windows programs that let you do this, but what should you do if own have a Mac?
The best option is to use an online video downloading service that will capture a youtube video from YouTube. Most of these services will only grab the raw .flv file from YouTube and the problem with this is you will quickly figure out this doesn’t do very much for you.
What you really need is an online service that can also convert the video into a format you need. This might be an audio mp3 file, or for videos .mp4 or quicktime .mov files work great on Macs. If you do not know where to find such a service I highly recommend http://www.captureyoutube.net. It’s a very easy service to use.
Here’s how to use it:
Step 1: Just head on over to YouTube and find the video you want. Then copy and paste the entire YouTube URL into your clipboard.
Next head on over to the capture YouTube site and put the YouTube URL into the little box provided. Then pick the format you want. On Macs .mp4 videos will work the best. For audio use the mp3 format.
Lastly, just press the download button and wait. This can take several minutes (it could even take 10 minutes or longer for it to capture and convert the video. Be patient for it to finish.
When it’s done you can push the download button and enjoy your video. There isn’t much more to it.
Here’s one last tip: You can even save these audio or video files right into the ‘automatically add to Itunes’ folder. Then your YouTube clip will get imported into Itunes. This is great if you want to use it on your Ipod when you’re not online.