Convert YouTube videos to AVI/MPEG/WMV

In this tutorial you will learn how to convert YouTube videos to AVI/MPEG/WMV with Freez flv2avi.

Step 1: Download YouTube video

Downloading YouTube movies is not a build in feature offered by YouTube.com. But as the videos are just streaming flv-files (Flash Video), it is possible to capture them. There are several options, probably the easyiest way to download the FLV is to use a site like keepvid.com. Copy the URL of the YouTube video (from the adress bar) and paste it into KeepVid. Click Download and the download link for the FLV-file will be created. Right click the link and choose Save target as. Choose a logical name (and don´t forget the .flv extension) and save the video - for instance -  at your desktop.

Download the YouTube video in FLV format with Keepvid.

Step 2: Download and install Freez FLV2AVI

Download the freeware program Freez FLV2AVI here. After downloading, install flv2avi (using the standard paths, just click next - next - next and finish).

Step 3: Convert the YouTube video to AVI (or MPEG / WMV)

Start FLV2AVI (it will be in the Start Menu, under ´Freez software´).

Click Add and choose the FLV file you just downloaded from YouTube and click Open. The video will be added to the ´list´ (well, it´s only a list if you open more that one video file at once, right :-). So if you want to do a conversion of more videos at once, that´s the way to do it. Just click Add and Open some more videos. In this example, we will convert only one video though.

Click Add and choose the video(s) you want to convert.

The default output format is AVI. If that´s fine with you, don´t bother. If you want to save the video in another format (MPEG or WMV), click Settings and choose the appropriate format. In the settings screen, you can also change the video bitrate, audio bitrate and frame rate. And you can change the output video width and height. Play with these settings if you like, we will keep it simple and choose the standard output options.

A lot of options are available, play around to see what best fits your needs.

The standard output directory is c:\videooutput. If you want to change that, you can do so; otherwise, click Start to begin converting the YouTube video to AVI. The conversion process will only take a couple of seconds, depending on the size of the flv-file and the processor of your computer. And... you´re done!