How to Download 720p High Definition YouTube Videos

Nice! 720p videos are awesome! Great post :)

isnt downloading youtube videos illegal?

Thanks you Chris for this good blog post but I couldn’t get it to work on my computer. I am using firefox 3.0.4 and it wouldn’t let me bookmark the javascript code. It is 12/4/08 just so you know because youtube did a redesign of their navigation page.

Does not work on IE 7

http://startube.mobi is the site where we can search and download YOUTUBE videos without softwares (NO SOFTWARE NEEDED) just a click you can download it to your MOBILE PHONE, iPHONE and PC in the formats u like…

mitcsoki:
Internet Explorer does not accept BookMarkerLets, FireFox does.

Pamela:

Startube.mobi was not accessable when I tried it.

Chris:
All that your bookmarketlet does for me on Mozilla 5.0 is send me back to my home page.

[...] commenter posted a pointer to a Chris Pirillo piece that explains in great detail how to download an MP4 of a [...]

I’m running Firefox 3.0.4. I followed the instructions, clicked the bookmarklet, and nothing happened.

Here’s something that worked for me however:

http://www.megaleecher.net/Downloading_Youtuube_Videos_In_Mp4_And_HD_Quality

This site lets you download an extension that automatically puts those download links in the YouTube sidebar.

(Once you download the .xpi file, make sure you drag and drop it into an open Firefox window to get the extension install prompt.)

It did not work for me either. Maybe this is because YouTube automatically redirects any YouTube URL to the French version (I live in France). I can watch the videos, but the bookmarklet basically does nothing (on Safari 4.0 build 5528.1).

It doesn’t work for me (i’m too lazy to check why) but you can take the other javascript link (the link on “Download YouTube MP4″) and just change ?fmt=18 to ?fmt=22 . It will start the download of the MP4 hidef video

You should have this link :
javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=22&video_id=’+swfArgs['video_id']+’&t=’+swfArgs['t']}

It won’t work because the ‘ and ” characters are replaced by \u2019 and \u201D (’ and ”)

I got the thing to work, but when I download it It’s NOT the 720p veresion, just the regular ‘watch in higher quality’ version.

And yes, im using the correct extenstion, and yes, the video im watching is in 720p. help?

Great! Thanks!

Thanks for the insights; I have found that simply pasting the format code designator at the end of the URL for a stadard video does the trick. you add ‘ &fmt=18 ‘ for standard MP4 and ‘ &fmt=22 ‘ for HD 720p (if available) to the standard URL for a youtube video. If you go into your IE explorer browser cache (even up to IE 7) the file is there (I go to the cache and sort the files largest to smallest).

With this method there is no need to use script plugins OR external sites. You just set up a shortcut to your browser cache ‘Temporary Internet Files’ folder in windows.

i use this from the official google blog
javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=’+(isHDAvailable?’22′:’18′)+’&video_id=’+swfArgs['video_id']+’&t=’+swfArgs['t']}

@Jacob
NO IT IS NOT ILLEGAL (but against the TOS) SINCE YOU HAVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED IT BY WATCHING IT!

Yeah, none of the things on this page worked at all for me. Also, even given a few arguments, /get_video is a blank page.

Chris, the characters in your URL are escaped. That makes it not work for me and I’m too lazy to manually unescape it.

mark on Feb 27th has a working link. All single-quotes were replaced by different characters, probably when posting here, and you need to paste in Notepad and manually change them back before use.

I made it clearer for all three video format offered by youtube, FLV, MP4 and HD.

Here:

FLV
—
javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=’+swfArgs['video_id']+’&t=’+swfArgs['t']}

MP4
—
javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=18&video_id=’+swfArgs['video_id']+’&t=’+swfArgs['t']}

HD
—
javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=22&video_id=’+swfArgs['video_id']+’&t=’+swfArgs['t']}

—
Notice the only difference is after the get_video?, either fmt=22& or fmt=18& for HD and MP4 respectively are added. Simply remove to get the old FLV file. I prefer to have more control over which format I want, so I made these three bookmarklets name YT: FLV, YT: MP4 and YT: HD.

NOTE!
If using the first bookmarklet posted on this site won’t work, most likely the video is not available in HD. Use MP4 instead, or even if still not working, FLV.

I’m screaming and pulling my hair, cursing and screaming again. I turned on links in the menu thingy at the top of vista machiney. So for me to download a 720p video from youtube, in plain english, all I have to do is put the

javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=22&video_id=’+swfArgs['video_id']+’&t=’+swfArgs['t']}

IN WHEREEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After I highlight it what do I do click by click?

So simply superb

Dumb question: HOW do I install the bookmarklet? I’m not familiar with it.

What an absolute and utter waste of time. Learn how to do something properly before posting crappy scripts on the net.

what about a bookmarklet for HQ? Or am I missing something simple here…

I’m trying to use it with Google Chrome, and its not working.
Is it that chrome doesn’t support it?

Thanks for this. I found Alex’s post to be the best with the 3 different bookmarklets.

Someone asked about how to just get “HQ” (it’s just MP4):
FLV = low quality (.flv file)
MP4 = HQ (med) quality (.mp4 file)
HD = HD (high) quality (still .mp4 file)

The problems most people are seeing here are probably typos that must be fixed (you can’t just cut and paste). In Alex’s post, you have to copy the code to a text editor and replace the apostrophes (4 in each) with single quotes – look carefully since they almost look exactly the same.

To create a bookmarklet, just find out how to create a plain new bookmark in your browser. You can name it whatever you want, then use the posted code above, starting with “javascript…” (with typos corrected), for the address (url). Try the new bookmarklet in the window with the video. If you are getting errors in your javascript console window, then you still have typos to fix. Otherwise the file should auto-download.

Hope that helps.

hey rick, thanks! that was SUPER helpful!!!!!! :)

Nothing worked for me, but.. guess what: just copy the URL in jdownloader and it will download the HQ-temp file, convert it to mp4 and you have the best available quality. simple.

This sucks. How do you take the code and make it into a bookmarklet? How could he leave that out??

ok I figured out the coding thanks to Rick/Alex but in the end it doesn’t work anyway. Nice way to waste an hour…

very happy for this web. thank you

very interisting post currently I use http://www.live-downloader.com/ which support HD

I used to download videos this way but for some reason the download button doesn’t work anymore.

Any ideas?

P.S. Sorry for ani mistake, english is not my language :p

yea. same here. i used this alot. im not sure if youtube just updated there site. the link for the mp4 download no longer works

The script has been broken and a fix has been made but is not the same as before

Read and re-install the script from here

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html