How to get YouTube mp4 video

Did you ever want to download a video from YouTube? Maybe you have found numerous web sites that give you a way to download YouTube videos, but only provide an "flv" file. In this tutorial I will show you how to download an "mp4" YouTube video of your choice.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A web browser (e.g. Firefox)
• A text editor
• A Media Player software

1. Open up your web browser and navigate to "YouTube.com". I will be using Firefox. You could use any browser, but beware that steps may differ if you are using some other browser.

2. 
   View page source

   When you are on the page that plays the "YouTube" video of your choice, press "Ctrl+U" or go to "View>Page Source" at the top left, to take a look at the page's source code.

3. When Firefox window with lots of code shows up, minimize it for a later use. Also create a new text document, somewhere on the desktop (for easy reference) and call it "youtube.txt". I will be using the default Windows text editor - "Notepad". You may use your favorite text editor.

4. Copy and paste this:
   
   http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=ID&t=SIGNATURE&fmt=18
   
   into "youtube.txt"

5. Now open up the window with the code for the "YouTube" video page. Press "Ctrl+F" and you should see a small bar appear at the bottom of the window; cursor should be focused in text field, that is labeled "Find:" (which means you can start writing your search query).

6. 
   Find query in the source code

   Now type in "v=" and your query should be immediately highlighted in the code. Next, carefully highlight text right after "v=" until you reach the ampersand ("&"). After highlighting, copy the text(i.e. press "Ctrl-C"). Paste the text somewhere inside the "youtube.txt" file.

7. Now repeat step 6, with the following adjustments: search for "&t=".
   Update ( August 22, 2009 ): Now search for "t": (quotation mark, tee, quotation mark, colon).
   
   Thank you chitwant for using my tutorial and reporting an outdated information!

8. 
   Save your video

   Last and most important step. Inside "youtube.txt" replace ID and SIGNATURE with the text from Step 6 and Step 7 respectively.
   Your result should look like this:
   
   http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=XVnRzEjpUmE&t=OEgsToPDskLFPxyKt7R1RnuTBDGeY4UZ&fmt=18
   
   Now you can copy and paste the above url into your browser's address bar. Press "Enter" and save the video.

Tips & Warnings

• Windows Media Player will not play "mp4" files
• VideoLAN plays "mp4" files, and can be found here: http://www.videolan.org
• Pay extra close attention to the text that you are highlighting and copying.
• You can only download a video once.
• If you want to download a video that you had, but lost, you will have to repeat the steps described here.
• Copying the url that I have in the last step may not work.

Resources

• Idea for downloading YouTube video at this link

[kievan]

on 8/22/2009 It works again. Thank you chitwant!

[kievan]

on 8/22/2009 Thanks for your post. I will look into that.

[chitwant]

on 8/22/2009 crazy......looks like you tube changed something in the javascript.....if we try to find '&t='....nothing matches...and thus not able to obtain the signature...

If I remember it worked quite a while ago (last year)...Anybody has some idea/suggestion for this!

[hlruther]

on 1/17/2009 I had no idea you could even do this. Thanks for the tips.

[offgrid]

on 1/13/2009 Great article. I'll have to try this too. I have Recommended You.