YouTube Downloader is a nice little freebie that helps you download video clips from places like YouTube, MySpace and GoogleVideo. It is very easy to use. These videos are downloaded in their original .flv format.

YouTube Downloader then allows you to convert the file to other formats such as iPod, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid or MP3 if you choose although installing a simple flv player means you don't need to convert them. If you want to email a video to a friend then it would be best to convert it to avi or mpeg format.

I found the conversion didn't work to start with - all I got when I tried to convert to AVI was audio with no video and when I tried to convert to wmv I got an error message. I then found this at Snapfiles "Biennesoft YouTube Downloader uses FFmpeg as engine for the video conversion". That means nothing to me but after a quick Google I did find mention of the word Codec. Ahh, all is now as clear as mud. Again, not something I understand but with a little more searching I found this Codec site afreeCodec, that kind of explains things and also had what I needed. Well I'm still not sure exactly what it was I needed but I downloaded and installed the recommended "pack" of common codecs called ffdshow and it all worked after that :)

Biennesoft YouTubeDownloader will not play the file for you once you have it on your computer. If you don't already have a program for playing the .flv file I recommend Any FLV Player