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Free Download HD YouTube Video

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Every internet users loves to watch YouTube, but ironically only some groups of people know how to download free YouTube videos easily with least effort required.

Initially, we can only download free YouTube videos in FLV format which can be learnt from previous article, Free Download YouTube Video with Safari. Until not long ago, YouTube has released high quality MP4 video as an additional feature for its users. It will be really satisfying if those MP4s can be downloaded.

The good news is, we know two tricks that can be used to download HD YouTube Video. And we feel that it's such a great honor to share these.

Download with Activity Monitor

Everything that is visible to eyes are downloadable and for Safari web browser, all files can be spotted inside Activity Monitor. Amongst all of files listed inside, there exists a file linking to the HD Video. To spot and download it, follow these steps.

  1. Open YouTube URL to video. Append URL with &fmt=18 to view HD video
  2. Show up Activity Monitor (Command-Option-A)
  3. Seek for file with largest size and Option-Click it
  4. The download should be started with default name video.mp4

For Firefox users, HD YouTube video is downloadable using bookmarklet. Just drop the bookmarklet on Bookmark Bar and click on it when you are opening YouTube page. New link will appear afterwards.

Bookmarklet to Download YouTube HD

Here is the bookmarklet: YouTube HD
Drag it to your Bookmarks Bar and it will look like screenshot below.

Source. Download YouTube HD via Mac OS X Hints

I've tried this trick with this YouTube video: Barack Obama on the Inauguration and it works. But for some videos, this bookmarklet doesn't work and the activity monitor trick will be needed.

Feel free to share your feeling on the comment box and point out if I've missed any.

Categories: Tips and Tricks, Video
Tags: Video, YouTube

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18 Comments

Steve 

&fmt=18 is the baseline HD quality version. fmt can go much higher.
Some video's go up to &fmt=26

Shawn 

Although I am usually for doing things the old fashion way (activity, copy, paste into downloadsm abd then convert it through iSquint), but the program MacTubes works VERY well.  the program sometimes wont find all the videos in the search section, but you can download videos straight to mp4 format and you have a choice between higher and lower quality formats.

NaVi 

I am using "download helper", an add-on for firefox. But it downloads in flv. I haven't tried to download the HD videos with. But the tips listed above are interesting.

Thanks

elmobiscuit 

for some reason when i open it up on quicktime it says AN invalid public movie atom was found in the movie

i selected HD under the video is this function newer then this post

PLEASE HELP

Wendy 

Have you tried to open it with iTunes? If the file format is MP4, iTunes should be able to play the movie.

Arthur 

When the file starts downloading its not called "video.mp4" but  "get_video" which can only be opened with textedit. Any help here ?

Wendy 

Add .FLV after get_video, then you should be able to open it with FLV Player. But here, you won't get high quality video (not MP4, only FLV).

Arthur 

Thanks a lot !

ExpiredYogurt 

thanks! this helped me a lot! this is really useful for getting random clips for a movie-making!

www.video-download-capture.com 

Thanks for your good recommendation. But here i just want to tell you a powerful tool for you all to download and capture online  HD video. It is Video Download Capture. 
Download Hulu videos

How to capture Tube8 video

alfonso 

hey!!! would this work with megavideo???

FRANK 

WOW! You are angel sent from heaven! I had tried an alleged "working" bookmark but it kept giving errors! This works perfectly fine! Thanks!

Erik Jenkins 

You can also just add "kiss" right before the "youtube" in the URL. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXXXXXXXXX would become http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=XXXXXXXXXXX

Joi 

I use Tooble. Simple and straight forward app. IT not only allows you to download HD content from YouTube but it also can convert it for use on your iPhone/iPod Touch.

Check it out at http://tooble.tv/index.php

Connor Crosby 

Wow, this really works!  Great!!!

brandon 

<object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Co941gzKj2Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Co941gzKj2Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&" allowscriptaccess="always" height="340" width="560"></embed></object>

Jenny Ngo 

I have a question, I tried to do it but I have no idea what to do for #3, I get this box that says Activity and shows a long list uder the video I want to convert. What do I click on? It goes like this: http://csi.gstatic.com/csi?v=2&s=youtube&action=watch&fmt=22&asv=3&rt=ct.752,ol.1236,fs.875,gv.982,fvb.2364,aft.4272,vl.3290&e=903901
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/xeMSrclEAow/default.jpg
http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/5OIc5HtfFBc/default.jpg
http://i3.ytimg.com/i/RIF82gEz9eTnjVzaEpZNuw/1.jpg?v=71144d
http://i4.ytimg.com/vi/7gTnN7bnmb4/default.jpg
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/cssbin/www-core-vfl134719.css
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/favicon-vfl122048.ico .... (There's more)
 And like that. I don't know any of it that I should click on cause when I tried to do it by myself. Nothing happened.

If someone replies to me, thank you before hand and thank you for taking the time to read this.

lonelystooner 

Thanks for the first time this work on my first try! patting myself on the back.

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