Dear Lifehacker,
Know any tricks?
Sincerely, I Want My Portable TV
Dear TV, YouTube displays its videos embedded in a Flash player with no way to download them to your hard drive. Luckily, videoblogger Josh Kinberg provides a Greasemonkey script that helps you do just that. (Non Firefox/Greasemonkey users, a bookmarklet’s available in the comments at that link as well.) Once the script is enabled, click on the “Save as to download Flash video” at the top of any YouTube video page.
The file you’re prompted to download will be called “get_video.php” or somesuch. Be sure to change the filename to something with a .flv extension, which is a Flash movie.
Once you’ve got the Flash movie saved, it’s time to convert it. If you’re on a Windows PC, try iTinySoft Total Video Converter. Mac users, try the ffmpegX utility [via Mac Dev Center].
Enjoy your video to go!
Love, Lifehacker