Workshop: Save Youtube videos to your hard disk

Find out how clips from video-sharing site Youtube can be downloaded and saved to your PC

The video-sharing site Youtube is a web phenomenon.

It’s at the forefront of the trend for ‘user-generated content’, in which ordinary people upload their own video content onto the internet, rather than just accepting the material fed by television and film companies.

There are vast amounts of video material on Youtube, ranging from home clips to projects from budding film-makers and musicians. There are also film clips and music videos as well.

However, it can take a while to locate and view individual clips from Youtube, and there’s no obvious way to save favourites to your hard disk. But it is possible to download video material from Youtube to your PC and create your own library of video clips.

How to save Youtube videos to your hard disk.

Material on Youtube will be subject to copyright and it would break copyright to download clips without the express permission of the copyright owners. Youtube has had trouble with some film and record companies for hosting copyright material. Viacom recently forced Youtube to remove more than 100,000 video clips that had been uploaded by Youtube users.

Youtube has started cleaning up its act recently. It has signed deals allowing it to carry material from big companies. There’s plenty of free-to-download material to be found.