Download YouTube Movies and Convert Them Free

My kids are obsessed with watching Minecraft videos on YouTube and when we had to go on a trip recently they wanted me to find a way to download YouTube movies and put their YouTube videos on their Kindle Fires so they can watch them in the car without any Wi-Fi access on the long drive.  Well a quick turn and scouring everything from Google Chrome Extensions to software, I found something that works very well and is free.  One of the two programs I used was YTD Video Converter.

Why I chose download software:

I looked at several Chrome Plugins that download YouTube videos and many of them redirect to a 3rd party site to do the download and some I just didn’t trust, I also wanted to not only download the YouTube video but convert it to a media format compatible with the Kindle Fire or other Android tablets so this prevented me from considering a Chrome Extension or other browser extension as I wanted a YouTube video downloader as well as a YouTube video converter in one package.

YTD Video Downloader

This is the YTD Video Downloader which works well and is very fast, but not as feature rich as the Any Video Converter listed as the second option.

You can get YTD Video Downloader from CNET: http://download.cnet.com/YTD-Video-Downloader/3000-2071_4-10647340.html

Make sure you don’t install the toolbar that most freeware have to override your search engine, but the software is clean and I scanned both the initial exe file and the full installation folder/register with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and it all came back clean after the install.

Once installed you run the software and just one at a time cut/paste the YouTube video URL and click download (set your default download location if you want something different).  It downloads them very fast, and if you want to do multiple videos at the same time you can upgrade to the Pro version of YTD Video Downloader which is a good incentive to upgrade.

After the YouTube video is downloaded you can convert it to other media formats by clicking on the convert tab.  Select the video format, though it doesn’t have a lot of flexibility in media formats for Android, so I recommend another free product to do the video format conversion instead.

However, if you have an iPad, iPod or iPhone then the video format will work fine, the PSP video format will work fine for most Android tablets as well although if you want exact video conversion with optimal resolution sizes, then I would recommend you download another freeware called Any Video Converter.

Any Video Converter

Ironic that the YTD Video Downloader also converts, and Any Video Converter also downloads, their names don’t truly showcase that they both can download YouTube Videos and convert them to other media file formats.  Any Video Convert is hands down the more superior product of the two in that it can do any media file on your drive and convert to virtually any output media file you desire, it also lets you download YouTube videos, specify the format of the download, then convert them to any other format.

You can get AnyVideoConverter from CNET too http://download.cnet.com/Any-Video-Converter/3000-2194_4-10661456.html and install it.  Again I scanned pre-installation file and all post installation files and all came back clean.  Like with YTD Video Downloader you will need to select “custom” and uncheck installing and changing your toolbars in your browser.

You click download, cut and paste your YouTube Video and then you will see an option to make the download format WEBM or MP4 with various sizes.  I just chose the larger MP4 most of the time.

Once downloaded, just click convert all files now and select your output, or if you know you want all output to be the same, then select preset output.

You have a ton of choices, just select the device category, then select the exact device or nearest match.  They had Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD 7″ and Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ as just some of the many options under Android Tablets.

The videos are put into a folder with your put device type in your default output location.

Then you just drag and drop your new x264 mp4 files to your Kindle Fire and put them in the videos folder.

Open them up and watch them in your Gallery app on the Kindle Fire.

You can follow this process to download any YouTube Video and convert it to any tablet media file format or smart phone format.

So this is one easy way to download YouTube movies and convert the YouTube videos so you can watch them on your Kindle Fire, Google Nexus 7, iPad and other tablets with ease.  The downloading and converting of YouTube videos with either of these 2 YouTube Video Download applications for Windows and media converters and best of all they are both free, no watermark, and no shareware which expires after a certain time.