YcPod can download videos from YouTube. It can also retrieve videos from the browser cache, making it function as a universal grab tool for almost all video sharing sites.
If you want a tool that can download any video from any video sharing site, you can try Orbit Downloader (with the Grab++ module). Or you can use this tool; I tried it on several sites that offered FLV videos and it worked beautifully (including iFilm, MTV, YouTube, and a number of others).
Technically speaking this program doesn’t download videos from sites directly but can retrieve them from the cache, which amounts to the same thing. Here are some notes on this:
- First thing to do is open the video you are seeking in your browser (assuming its not from YouTube, in which case you can just paste the URL straight into YcPod).
- Once the video has run all the way to the end run YcPod, select Video then Cached video and click the get cached videos button. A list of all videos in the cache will be displayed.
- The video list will contain a number of video formats and not just FLV. Select the video you want and save it. That’s it.
- Note that the video you are looking for may not have a self-evident name and you might need to hunt around for it (unfortunately there is no preview function). You also in some cases may need to manually add the “.flv” extension to the file name.
- Finally, please note that it may be the case that, even if you do find the video, the playback might be a little off. I noticed this in videos downloaded from Veoh.com. The color scheme was completely off; I’m guessing that this is a protection mechanism that they use to prevent downloading and that their video player remedies during playback.
Use this program if you (a) want a quick and easy way to be able to grab any video playing in your browser from any site, and (b) are disinclined to install a download manager such as Orbit, for whatever reason. YcPod is a small, no install executable that does the job very well. For FLV video playback, use VLC Media Player.
Version tested: 1.0 build 1
Compatibility: Windows XP (possible 2000 and Vista).
Go to the program page to get the latest version (approx 168K).
