As we all know that none of the video sharing sites provide a link to download their videos. So we will have to do some tweaking and play around to download the videos. Here are some ways to download any video from the internet , they are based on the common hack (Right-click -> "Save Target As" OR copy the link into your download manager,but change the file extension to .flv)

Update: The simplest way of downloading videos from youtube that I came across is to use the services of Kissyoutube .To download any youtube video,just add the word 'kiss' before the word 'youtube' in the video url.For example:

This is the link of the video "Father's Day video ".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnckrFGvwx4
To download this video just add the word 'kiss' to this url as shown below:
http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=ZnckrFGvwx4

Now you will have both the options,either to watch the video or download it.Enjoy!!!

Method 2:This is the simplest method.Download VDownloader. It will download Google, Youtube and Grinvi videos on your computer in avi or mpeg format (not flv) !This is the best method as it downloads videos in avi or mpeg format which can be played on your Pc(as opposed to other methods which download videos in flv format).

Run Vdownloader.exe and copy the url of the video you want to download. Click on Download button and enjoy.

Method 3: For Firefox Users - Install the VideoDownloader Extension from Mozilla Addons website - It downloads all embedded objects on a webpage including the video clips. This is very easy for beginners.

Method 4: One other easy way is to copy your video URL and paste it on KeepVid Lite. When you click submit, you will be provided with a link to save the video as an FLV file.

Using these tricks you can easily download videos from Youtube or Google Videos or Metacafe.

Now some more questions that arise are:

If you use method 2 or 3 you get your video in FLV format.Here sre some tips to manipulate this format:

How do I play FLV files on my computer - They dont open with windows media player or winamp or itunes or real player ?

You can download free FLV players to watch FLV files locally. A good FLV player has a simple and easy-to-remember name - FLV Player. Another nice alternative is the Riva FLV player.Try them out.

How do I split a large FLV file into smaller playable video clips?

This is the most common question among video enthusiasts - they want to split a large FLV video file into smaller chunks for editing or resharing only the interesting tidbits on the internet. To break an FLV file, get the free FLV Parser - a tiny command-line tool to split FLVs into pieces. Its intended use is to convert a large FLV into a series of shorter FLVs based on a series of millisecond-based timecodes. Using the -s switch will split the audio and video of the outputted files; the audio track will be extracted as a series of MP3 files, and the short FLVs produced will have no audio track at all.

How to convert FLV videos to Windows AVI or Quicktime MOV or 3GP formats ?

The free Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer software from Super can convert FLV files to practically any other video format including MP4, MOV H.264, AVI, ASF or Flash SWF animations. Super video convertor

How do I convert my AVI, MPEG, MOV, 3GP movie clips back to FLV format ?

Say you complete editing your movie in Windows Movie Maker or Avid and now left with an MOV file that you want to convert to FLV. Just get the free Riva FLV encoder and relax. The Riva encoder even lets you select parts of the video that you want to convert to FLV and crop the rest.

I have three small video clips that I download from Google Videos and now want to join them into one single video - How do I merge FLV files ?

There is no free software that lets you join FLV files other than the expensive Macromedia Flash Professional. However, here's a simple trick to join several flv video files - convert individual flv files to avi using Super [as mentioned above], then join the multiple Avi files into a single avi file using free VirtualDub and finally convert this avi back to FLV using Riva FLV encoder.Its done.

How do I watch Youtube Video on my iPod, PSP or Television ?

Again we'll make use of the Super Video Encoder mentioned above. Just convert the FLV file into a corresponding format (like Apple iPod or Sony PSP or MPG) and transfer it to your gadget.