The easiest way to download lossless YouTube to your computer

I get asked this question quite a bit as YouTube is increasingly blocked at more and more schools and teachers want to get content from home and bring it to school to share in their classrooms.

There are literally hundreds of ways to do this which I go into great detail in The ultimate guide to YouTube for educators but the simplest way by far is through Realplayer Basic.  

RealPlayer Basic can be freely downloaded here and takes a couple of minutes to install.  Once installed the next time a YouTube or any other form of web based loads on your desktop a little icon will ask you if you wish to download this file.  This will be instantly saved to your designated video folder and it will then offer you to convert it into a variety of formats once complete.

I have included an instructional video below for visual learners.  This was obviously put together by a teenage boy as you will find out.  Good luck

Download and clean up Video Files

I am sure that many of you have used a Youtube or similar video from a tube channel in the classroom and thought 2 things.  'Wouldn't it be good if I could download and keep this somewhere?" and "Is there something I could do to clean up this crappy quality video?"  The answer to both of these questions is yes.

Savevideo.me  allows you to simply drop in the URL of any video page and it will download it as a .flv video file straight to your desktop.   Realplayer SP is still the best I have seen - after you install the free version it will automatically just give you the option to download any audio or video stream within your browser.  It then instantly gives you the option to convert it to a number of formats.

Once you have your sometimes grainy and poor quality video saved you might want to take a look at Vreveal - this little pearler simply does some amazing things to shaky and grainy videos to dramatically improve them.  This one offers a free 30 day trial but is very cheap to purchase if it meets your needs.  This is what the FBI use to identify people in crowds on CCTV. 

Would love to hear your thoughts

The easiest way to download any video or audio Stream

Recently our school internet provider decided to block virtually anything that allowed for collaboration, creativity and ingenuity to the point that I am just about to change ISP's.  Youtube has been blocked for a while and I can understand this one but it doesn't mean you cant download a video or audio stream simply at home and share it in your classroom.

The latest incarnation of Real player Basic allows you to download any media stream and save it to your PC.  You can convert these to a number of formats  instantly within Real Player for an Iphone, Zune or just a standard PC format.

It doesn't get much easier to download, as soon as a video or audio stream loads in your bowser a real player pop-up will appear asking you if you wish to download.  That is as simple and as complicated as it gets.

There is a paid version of Realplayer, but remember you only actually need to get hold of the basic version which can be found here.

How can I use this in the classroom? I use it to grab news clips, for class discussions, sections of documentaries and even some green screen back grounds for our TV studio.  There are a range of classic fairy tales and fables next time you want to do some creative writing with your kids.