I was recently doing research for a post (Twelve Must Have Extensions for Google Chrome) and was surprised that there did not seem to be any simple “download any video from any video sharing site” extensions for Chrome, similar to DownThemAll or Download Helper for Firefox.
What I wanted was a plugin that can produce a download link (or links) for any video that is displayed on the page, without requiring the copying and pasting of URLs.
It was somewhat surprising when I couldn’t find anything, as I simply wanted a “normal” streaming video downloader and wasn’t looking for anything that can download encrypted media (TubeMaster++ and StreamTransport are standalone apps that can do that).For some reason, such an extension for Chrome seems somewhat elusive at the moment.
My research lead me to Clipnabber.com, a video downloading service that supports many dozens of video sharing sites (including many that you’ve never heard of and all the ones that you have). Clipnabber provides a javascript bookmarklet that you can drag to the toolbar of any browser (including Chrome). Once you browse to the page containing the video you want to download, a single click on the bookmarklet will send you to the Clipnabber site and present you with a link (or links) that will download your desired video (see screenshots above).
More notes on this service as follows:
- Two ways to use: (1) drag and drop the bookmarklet from the Clipnabber home page onto your bookmarks toolbar, then simply click on the bookmarklet whenever you see a video that you want to download, or (2) copy the URL of the video you want and paste it in the box in the Clipnabber.com page.
- HD videos: if the video service you are using supports a “regular” and “HD” version of the video, Clipnabber will produce multiple download links for you.
- Will not work on embedded videos on blogs or other sites: unlike some Firefox extensions, videos from YouTube or Veoh or whatever service embedded on blogs or other websites will not instantly work with the Clipnabber bookmarklet. What you need to do is click on the video itself in order to be transported to the original URL of the video on the video service site itself, then use the bookmarklet to download.
- Works with well over 100 video sharing sites: including most of the most well known ones such as YouTube, Veoh, Dailymotion, Megavideo, etc.
- Copy and pasting the source code from the video page: in some cases the Clipnabber service will ask you to go back to the video page, right click “view source”, copy that, then paste into Clipnabber service in order to download. Not sure why that is, but it seems to be quite rare.
- Downloading from encrypted sites: is not supported. Try TubeMaster++ for this or, see my earlier posting about downloading videos from Hulu.
- The bookmarklet: included below for your convenience. Drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar.
Go to Clipnabber.com for more info.
