Introducing VideoDuke 'advanced video downloader' for Mac

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One of the things I like to do is 'archive' YouTube (and DailyMotion etc.) videos to local storage on my computers and phones. Usually, this is so that I can enjoy music videos and documentaries (usually on my large-screened smartphone) while on trains, coaches, tubes and planes, without interruption and without needing huge cellular bandwidth.

Actually doing this has been a battle with Downloader plugins to the Firefox browser - they seem to come and go almost monthly - but now there's a better solution, at least if you have a Mac.

VideoDuke is a dedicated browser/downloader for the Mac and it works brilliantly. You use the integrated basic browser to go to the relevant video site and the available download options are shown in the interface, with the most likely, the highest resolution video file, the default.


Note that you can't download the highest resolution videos as YouTube keeps those as streaming only, possibly as an extra anti-piracy feature. Talking of which, Eltima Software makes every user of VideoDuke agree that all 'ripping' of videos is entirely for personal 'offline' use. Which is fair enough - everyone should play fair with copyrighted content.

VideoDuke has a 'Simple' mode but, unless I'm missing something, this reverts to the full 'advanced' (web view) mode as soon as you try searching for an item. So I'm not sure what the point of this is, unless you happen to have a specific YouTube URL already in your clipboard?


But still, the tool works superbly, isn't expensive ($20), and saves an awful lot of time playing 'find the working downloader' in third party Mac browsers.

Recommended.

Comments

Kurt said…
I use Youtube Downloader, available from XDA and the author, "Dentex", here:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2335450

It is often updated keep up with the moving target that is YouTube stream formatting, and you can skip having to use the computer for this task altogether.
5:18 PM
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