VSVideo Downloader Lite lets you download YouTube videos to your computer so you can view them offline or at a later time. It’s simple, easy to use, and will let you choose the size and video file formats that you would like to download.
YouTube has so many videos on it now it’s a pretty much unlimited source of viewing material. Some of it is funny, some of it is informative, and some of it is just plain weird. Whatever your tastes are, you’re bound to have found something on there you enjoy watching or might want to watch again later.
The interface for VSVideo Downloader Lite is pretty simple and doesn’t have a lot of complex settings and other menus to wade through. It has a few different options for your downloads, like the option to immediately download upon connection or options for what format to use for transcoding. There are a number of different resolutions as well as different codecs supported, including the most popular ones like .mp4 and some of the less well known ones such as web-m or .3gp (for phones). This is a nice feature since it means your probability of compatible results with whatever you plan to use for playback will be much higher. The amount of different resolutions alone can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but the best thing to do if you’re not sure is to start with the default settings and try modifying them based on the results you get.
Perhaps you’d like to show a video to a friend. In either case, or another, you’ll want to save a particular YouTube video to your computer so you can watch it later, offline, or both. VSVideo Downloader Lite lets you do this, for free.
The menus are pretty self explanatory and not difficult to navigate. The only two I used much were General settings and View settings, both of which were pretty clear about what they were for. The others are probably not needed for most users, like the connection settings, but if you’re using a proxy it’s good to know they are there. The downloads were pretty quick, topping at around 2 MB/s which is definitely good enough. The results were viewable, based of course on the original material and how decent the quality was.When a download is finished there is a pop up window to notify you, along with a chime in case you’re AFK.
The only real downside I was able to unearth for VSVideo Downloader Lite is that it wanted to install a toolbar and reset my Internet home page. This kind of ad/junkware is pretty common in free software, but that doesn’t make it less annoying. All you have to do is uncheck the boxes to avoid the issue, however, so it’s not totally a deal breaker. The quality of VSVideo Downloader Lite in general is enough to get me to use it, despite the toolbar and adware annoyances. Until next time, my friends.
[Thanks to reader Panzer for the tip about this software]
Get VSVideo Screen Downloader Lite here (Windows).
