Watching free videos on the web is easy. Unfortunately, we don’t always have time to watch videos online when we find them. That’s what downloading videos is for, so we can watch them at our leisure. Most web videos these days, though, are embedded into the web page — making it harder to download online videos to your computer.
The old “Right click, Save As” strategy doesn’t always work so well anymore. If you want to download a video embedded on a site like YouTube, you can still do so if you have a video downloader, such as RealPlayer. If you don’t have a free video downloader installed on your computer, just click the orange button on the top right corner of this page to download RealPlayer free.
DOWNLOAD ONLINE VIDEOS AND BUILD UP YOUR VIDEO LIBRARY
We’ve rounded up five sites full of great content where you can find and download online videos free and watch them at your leisure. Whether you’re interested in seeing the latest viral video sensations, watching old movies, finding the latest in entertainment news, watching movie trailers, or discovering new video channels with fresh content daily these sites have you covered. To make sure a video is legal to download, look for licensing information about the video. Typically, videos with a “Creative Commons” license are legal to download, but may have limitations on how you use the video.
1. YouTube
You’re probably already familiar with YouTube, the world’s most popular video-sharing site and the third most popular site on the entire Internet. YouTube racks up a staggering four billion video views daily. The appearance and interface of YouTube are straightforward providing a simple, but effective video player in the middle of a white screen. Any registered user can upload their own video to YouTube.
The site has also become a popular source for official versions of music videos, movie trailers, and particularly crowd-pleasing TV commercials. Most of the videos are shot and submitted by regular everyday YouTube users, and some – like a few well-known funny cat videos — have gone on to enjoy enormous global popularity on YouTube.
2. Metacafe
Metacafe is another video site specializing in shorter and more popular videos. Whereas YouTube is a giant, endless buffet of videos, Metacafe is more like the Chef’s Special of the Day – fewer overall videos that are well-organized and easy to find in genres like Music, Sports, and TV clips. Metacafe keeps an outstanding array of current movie trailers, and then pairs them with exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes videos related to that particular movie. Metacafe’s “Trending on the Web” section curates and collects the Internet’s most popular viral videos of the day. It’s a great place to quickly find a certain popular viral video you’ve heard about.
3. Dailymotion
One of the largest video sites in the world, Dailymotion makes finding videos easy with a nicely organized home page. Dailymotion visitors see a slew of the current videos in categories such as Funny, Geek Out, News, and countless others. Most videos on Dailymotion are less than four minutes. Registered “super users” can upload videos of up to an hour in length and in high-definition (HD), but you don’t have to register to download the longer videos. Some of the video categories on Dailymotion are a little racier than most YouTube categories, but family audiences can still enjoy categories like Animals and Games. Dailymotion is easy to navigate, and pulls up galleries of recommended videos that you’re likely to enjoy based on your viewing habits.
4. Vimeo
Specializing in HD, Vimeo is an amateur video site where the results are anything but amateur. Most of the videos available on Vimeo are user-submitted; it’s not a site to visit if you’re looking for popular music videos or movie trailers. What you will find, though, are big and beautiful HD videos shot by some of the most skilled up-and-coming directors and animators. The Vimeo video screen is far larger and has a higher resolution than any of the other sites mentioned here. Those who like to upload videos to your cell phone will appreciate that Vimeo videos are optimized for playback on mobile devices.
5. IMDb
The Internet Movie Database has become more than just a tool for figuring out who’s that actress in the movie you’re watching. IMDb has grown into a site that offers movie trailers and clips from popular talk shows like “The Late Show with David Letterman” – all of which can be downloaded to your computer. There are also full episodes of TV shows that can be watched at IMDb. The site even offers a huge gallery of full-length movies and short films made by up-and-coming directors.
Many of the movies and short-films listed on the site are available for viewing, however, you’ll be given the option to go to another site such as Crackle or Amazon to watch the movie. Note: Those sites typically require a subscription. That said there are older video options on the site such as Paradise Canyon with John Wayne, as well that don’t require a subscription. Those videos are part of the Internet Archive Project and can be watched online for free or even downloaded from the site.
DOWNLOAD ONLINE VIDEOS WITH REALPLAYER VIDEO DOWNLOADER
With RealPlayer, you’ll have the ability to download online videos you see on the Internet and save them to your computer. If you’ve installed RealPlayer, when watching a video online you’ll see the “Download This Video” button appear at the top right corner of the video player. Click that button, and the RealPlayer downloader will download the video to your computer and store it in the RealPlayer library.
Do you have other favorite sites for downloading videos? Any great recommendations for short films or epic funny videos? When do you watch the videos you download? Let us know below in the comments section below.
