Saving videos

In case you don't know and would like to, you can save online videos (eg. the Banana Splits one I mentioned yesterday) if you download and install VideoDownloader, which is available as a Mozilla Firefox Add-on. I've only used this twice now but it worked both times, so there we have it: a 100% success rate!**

In my experience (which might be freakish, I don't know) the video has to fully load in the browser first; you do have to view it online at least once, which can be a slow process if you're on a dial-up. But after that, save it to your computer. From then on, there'll be no wait for loading and no further cost to your download limit either, if you've got one. Watch at will, whenever. Fantastic.

The files are saved in .flv format, and one player which reads them is the VLC, which works even with older operating systems. I'm using Windows 98 and had to download the Microsoft Layer for Unicode (huh? see the note for Windows 95/98/Me users at VLC media player for Windows) but apart from that, all is well.

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** The comments on that page are indicating problems at the moment and one of the links doesn't work, but here is the site approached from a different direction:

VideoDownloader

Or here's an alternative (which I haven't tried):

Ook? Video Ook!