Youtube is the biggest video sharing site on the Internet. And also, arguably, the biggest source of interesting videos on the planet. If you’re like me, you’d also want to save a copy of all the interesting videos you find on youtube and on other video sites, to your computer. That, depending on who you talk to, can be quite a difficult thing to do.

If you ask me, downloading videos from youtube to your computer is not that difficult, and I’ve written about this earlier. The only problem with my solution is that it required the user to be using Linux or have access to a machine that’s running Linux.

What if you don’t use Linux and would still like to download interesting videos to your computer ?

Well, KeepVid is here to your rescue.

KeepVid is a site which, in the great unix tradition, does only one thing, and it does it well. Whenever you’re browsing through youtube and come across a wonderful video, that you’d like to keep for posterity, Just give KeepVid the link of the video, click on Download, and let it do the rest.

Apart from using the site to download videos, KeepVid also provides you with a bookmarklet for the same purpose, that is even easier to use.

A bookmarklet is a small script that you save as a bookmark in your browser, but unlike a bookmark, a bookmarklet does not take you to a website, instead, when clicked, a bookmarklet performs some function, one of a wide variety such as a search query or data extraction. The KeepVid bookmarklet performs the function of downloading the video that is currently being played in the browser.

To install the bookmarklet, go to the keepvid homepage and drag the bookmarklet from next to the KeepVid logo to the bookmarks toolbar of your browser.

Now, to download a video, just browse over to the video and while the video is playing, click on the Keep It! link in the bookmarks toolbar. You will then be redirected to the KeepVid site and presented with a link that you can use to download the video to your computer. Depending on the original source of the video, you will be able to download the video in both the .flv and the .mp4 formats.

I am already in love with KeepVid and the KeepVid bookmarklet and use it whenever I want to download a video from youtube or from any of the other sites that it supports.

Which other utilities/sites do you use to download videos to your computer ? Let me know in the comments.

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