How to Download / Save Streaming Online Videos to your Computer

There are several video streaming sites online like Youtube, CollegeHumor, Vimeo and lots of other popular ones where you can watch videos all for free. However, all these online video streaming sites do not allow you to download these videos. There’s no download option and you can only stream them. I’ve written a post on how to download facebook videos, saving youtube music videos as MP3 to your computer and even more recently, downloading Youtube videos as MP4 using a simple javascript.

Of course, to access good TV shows and movies from around the world, you can always sign up to an online streaming service. All the big names offer limited period trial so why not see which suits you best by looking into the LOVEFiLM or Netflix free trial today

This post explains how to download streaming videos from almost any website. I tried it on Youtube, Vimeo and a couple of others just to be sure it works perfectly. There are two ways which I found out though there are dozen other ways. These are my preferred options:

1. Using Real Player

If you don’t have Real Player installed on your computer, I guess it’s right about time you do. I wasn’t a Real Player fan till I recently found out about a recent upgrade they made to the software. Real Player now downloads from almost every online video streaming site and it’s quite a great feature. You don’t need any special settings, just download and use.

After download Real Player, restart your browser (I’m using Mozilla Firefox) and visit your streaming site.
 

As soon as the videos starts playing, move your mouse over the video, you should see a download appear anywhere on the page as show below:

 

The download button appears at the top left left corner of the video as show in the screenshot above but it might not be the same on every online streaming video site. You just need to mouse over the video and the download button appears anywhere on the page. Hitting the download button starts your download button automatically starts your download but it probably wont work on every site.

2. Using Firefox Addons

Firefox happens to be my favorite web browser and if you’re using this same browser, there’s a wide range range of addons available to download online streaming videos. I picked out my two favorite addons out of them and they are:

i. NetVideoHunter Addon For Firefox

ii Download Flash and Video Browser Addon

These addons work similarly and after installing them and restarting your browser, you should see the icon turn blue on your browser each time you have a streaming video playing.

 

Clicking on the icon shows the window. These addons allow you to download from almost all online video streaming sites and it’s a lot convenient using them.

I suggest you have Real Player and any of these addons installed on your Firefox browser. If one doesn’t work, the other definitely has to.