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The internet is quickly becoming a multimedia hub, and hundreds videos are uploaded to sites like Youtube and Google Video every single day. It's only natural that with such an abundance of content, one would want to download and keep certain videos for yourself. Whether they be funny, intriguing, or musical in nature, it's actually quite easy to download videos that would normally only be accessible by streaming them through a web browser.

The program that is (in my opinion) the best for downloading online videos would be the RealPlayer Download Agent. It comes bundled with the basic version of RealPlayer, which can be freely downloaded from www.real.com/realplayer. After downloading the file and installing the program, you're just a few short steps away from downloading your favourite videos to play on your computer anytime you want.

Once you have installed the software, navigate to any video streaming site such as Youtube, Google Video, or DailyMotion. Once you've found a video you want to download, simply navigate to the web page that you would if you wanted to stream it. The video will start to play, and a pop-up window should also appear on your screen. There will be an entry in the window with the name of the video you're watching and a button that says "Download". Clicking this button will transform the button into a progress bar to show how much of your video is currently downloaded. When the video file is finished, the progress bar will again be replaced with a button that says "Play". This will open your your default media player and run the movie from your hard drive.

The movie file that you've save will appear in your default location for Movies, in a folder called "RealDVRStorage." They will most likely be appended with the .flv file extension, which unfortunately cannot be played normally with Windows Media Player. You have two options to solve this problem, either download the codec for Flash Video files from http://www.playflv.com/, or download the VLC media player, which is by far superior to Windows Media Player (available from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/).

Using the RealPlayer method outlined above has many advantages to other sites that claim to do the same thing. The first advantage is how fast it is. I can take a three minute music video and download it in less than a minute with RealPlayer, whereas a site like www.vixy.net can take upwards of half an hour for the same file. RealPlayer also runs every time you see a video streaming, so it's a simple matter to download the files you want without having to open an application or website by yourself.

RealPlayer is the best method currently available for capturing video files that are streaming through your web browser. It is fast and efficient, and gives you files without having to do overly complex computing. If you've found a video on YouTube that you just have to have, RealPlayer is a solution for you.

Learn more about this author, Mishra Planeswalker.
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