[Tech] Saving Youtube or FaceBook videos to your computer/tablet/phone

[Brian Curry]

There are at least two reasons to save a FaceBook (FB)or Youtube video
and not just "clicking on it" to view it every time you want to see it

One is that if you have it locally on your machines, if the person
that posted it pulls it or is forced to pull it, you "still have it".
(Once something is on the Internet the chances of it being truly
removed/deleted is about ZERO. Be careful in what you post. "Taking
it back." is about impossible)

The other is that every time you view it from FB or Youtube, data is
being sent to your phone from the website and that consumes some of
your monthly data allowance. If you download it, and place it on your
phone, it is there "forever" and there are no data charges for playing
if from your phone's memory. You do need enough space on your phone,
or some type of external storage device you can connect to the phone
that has the file on it.

Now how to save the files. First Youtube has stopped many of the
"downloader" tools from working. I found one that does work.

I found: http://en.savefrom.net/ They offer a tool ("helper
extension) that you can "install on your computer." I DO NOT install
it. If you install it, it could be "phoning home" and I HATE THAT. I
let them do the work and get the file in "standard" form, which is
just fine for a phone. You put the Youtube video URL in the "Just
Insert Link" block and hit Enter or click the arrow. It will think a
bit, and then give you a download link. If the download link shows up
right away, someone else has already asked for it. (Who, you have no
clue.) When I asked for the Joe Chang video from Leadership
Conference it was there RIGHT NOW. Someone asked for it before me.
:):)

What "savefrom" appears to do is to download the video as if it was a
user playing it. It saves the MP4 file, and then forwards it to you.
It only downloads it once, and then forwards it again, if it is asked
for again.

Savefrom.net also offers a tool to download videos from FB too. I
tried it. It seems to take you to the FB direct video link, but does
not save locally. :(:(

I download FB videos somewhat directly and they are ON my machine.
Here is an example.

If you are still commuting to work, stuck in traffic, or know someone
that is, get one of these and you/they will get to work at the rate
you/they decide....

Here is the link:
https://www.facebook.com/chris.ooms.39/posts/1137889066241327 (You
will need to be logged into FB for this to work.)
Replace the "www" with "m" and that changes it to mobile/phone mode.
(Simplified to fit on a phone with VERY limited real estate.)
https://m.facebook.com/chris.ooms.39/posts/1137889066241327
Now click on the video. It will start playing.in its own tab or
window. Now do a "Save Page As" Save it to a location you can find
again. Think hard about renaming it to something that makes sense to
you and not the FB computer system.
If you are using Chrome, you have to be a bit trickier. It will not
launch in a new tab or window. You need to "right click" and do a
"Save As" (Crtl+S) and now you can save it somewhere you can find it
again, and with a title that makes sense to you.

For FB in Firefox, you are "saving the webpage" which is the playing
MP4 file. In Chrome, it seems you can right click on the playing video
and generate a new page/tab playing just the video or do a right click
on the video and then you can save JUST the video from page.

I have written this up for the PC world. Mac folks you will have to
figure out the convolutions to do the Mac equivalent.

Once you have the files on your computer, you can put them on your
phone by whatever method works for you. I generally use a USB
connection. I suspect it could also be transferred by BlueTooth.

Someone that gets this asked for "How do you do you save videos, it is
magic??" and I wrote it up to share. HTH.