How to Copy Video From YouTube to a Hard Drive

By Kirk Bennet

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YouTube enables users to upload their videos to the Internet and share them with millions of Internet users. You can copy videos from YouTube to your hard drive using third-party Windows programs or a Mozilla Firefox extension. Although most users share copyright-free content on YouTube, you can also find copyrighted videos. Downloading copyrighted videos may constitute fair use if you use them for non-commercial purposes on your personal computer.

RealDownloader

Step 1

Install RealDownloader on your computer.

Step 2

Navigate to the YouTube video that you want to copy to your hard drive.

Step 3

Hover the cursor over the video and click the "Download This Video" link that appears over the top right corner of the video. The RealDownloader window pops up and the YouTube video is copied to your hard drive. To play back the video, double-click its name in the RealDownloader window.

Mozilla Firefox Easy YouTube Video Downloader

Step 1

Launch Mozilla Firefox, navigate to the Mozilla Add-Ons website and click the "Add to Firefox" button to add the Easy YouTube Video Downloader extension to Mozilla Firefox.

Step 2

Navigate to the YouTube video that you want to copy to your hard drive, click the "Download" button under the video and select "MP4" from the menu to save the video as an MP4 file.

Step 3

Click the "Save File" radio button, click "OK," select the folder where you want to save the video and click "Save."

YTD Video Downloader

Step 1

Navigate to CNET and download and install the YTD Video Downloader.

Step 2

Navigate to YouTube, select the URL of the video in the address bar and press "Ctrl-C" to copy it to the clipboard.

Step 3

Launch the YTD Video Downloader software, click the "Paste URL" button to paste the URL from the clipboard and click the "Download" button to copy the video from YouTube to your hard drive.

Warnings

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