You know when someone sends you a link to a video clip at somewhere like YouTube or Google Video or MySpace and you like it so much you want to save it on your pc so you can watch it again or show grandma. Well here's how you do it, or rather, how I do it.

First off you need to download or retrieve the video clip to your computer and there are two ways you can do that. If it's only going to be the odd clip then I'd recommend doing it online, that is, using a website to do it for you. KeepVid is free for downloading the video but their software (which you don't need) is not free.

If you are going to be downloading several clips then I'd suggest installing a program to download or retrieve the clip for you.

• Bennesoft YouTube Downloader will do the downloading for you as well as converting the .flv file to other formats including for use on items such as iPods
• VideoCacheView is a teeny weeny little freebie that requires no installation. All you do is open it and it will find the video clip in your browser's cache. The beauty of this is that you aren't re-downloading the video file which saves time and bandwidth.

Once you have the programme installed for downloading you need another to actually play the flv file unless you convert it every time to something like .wma or .avi. So for playing the flv video file I recommend Any FLV Player however you might also need to install the right codecs to get it working. I installed ffdshow which you can get from Free_Codecs or Sourceforge and all worked well for me although on a couple of other computers it hasn't. In this case I use Windows Codec Pack which I found at snapfiles. This installs Media Player classic as well as codecs and Media Player Classic always works :)

Oohps, nope. Fast Forward to April 2009...MediaPlayerClassic doesn't always work. Well at least it's stopped working properly on my pc and I keep getting error messages saying the files can't be played. I've now installed ApplianFLVplayer.

I use Opera to browse the internet. Here's a way you can save the video clip without having to redownload it. Opera has a folder called Cache4. Do a search of your computer to find it. In opera 9.51 it is in Documents and Settings -> Local Settings -> Application Data -> Opera -> Opera -> Profile. Make a shortcut to this folder in my Docs or on your desktop so it is a bit more handy. Opera 9.51 no longer shows file extensions in this folder, older versions did which was far more useful. After just playing the video clip you want to save, open Cache4

1. go to the View menu and Choose Details
2. Put a check mark in front of Date Accessed and click OK
3. Click View menu again -> Arrange Icons by -> Accessed
This will sort the files in Cache4 by the date they were accessed however the first file may be the oldest file in the folder in which case you need to repeat step 3
4. Now copy the most recent file to a different folder on your pc (eg. make a folder in My docs called flv files)
5. Rename the file to something desriptive and add .flv at the end
6. Now try playing it

I hope that helps...Have fun!