How Does It Work?

This extension adds the functionality to download, convert or embed videos posted on Facebook.  When you click the download video link, the video will open as a .mp4 file.  You can then select, “Save Page As” from the File option in your menu bar to choose where to save the file on your PC.

The convert video link will take the video to the Zamzar free file conversion web site, where you can convert the file to .flv, .wmv, .avi, or the audio formats .mp3, .flac, or .wav. 

Start Downloading Facebook Videos! – You can pick up the Facebook Video add-on from the Firefox Add-ons web site.  So there you have it, now you can grab those Facebook videos you have been wanting to save to watch later.  (Kudos goes to ZeroPaid.com for finding this tip!)

The Full Screen Video add-on for Firefox does that.  Once installed, it adds a “Full Screen” menu option, when you right-click on any HTML5 powered video.  As of right now the only two known issues with this awesome extension are:

• When switching to full screen, the video will load and play from the start.
• Full screen is really only implemented on Windows at this point. On other operating systems, it’s merely a maximized window.

Other than that Full Screen Video gives you a simple addition to an already awesome feature of Firefox.  You can pickup this add-on via the Firefox Add-ons web site or check out the official web site for more information on the project.

How do you participate?  Here are the details from Mozilla:

It’s easy to participate in Fastest Firefox. Pick your talent (knitting, flipping burgers, brushing your teeth, whatever!) and make a video doing your thing—FAST! Follow the steps below and update before 6-21-09.

1. Make a 30-second video (home-movie style is perfect) of your fastest talent.
2. Click the button below to upload your video.
3. We’ll compile as many of your clips as possible into a single community video, so check after the Firefox 3.5 launch to see if yours made it!

Firefox 3.5 is two times faster than 3.0. And ten times faster than 2.0, or so they report via this new web site where you can learn about this speed run challenge. 

The extension, NetVideoHunter, promises you a world of easy to download videos and music from any YouTube-like video sharing web site.  With it, you can download media from places such as YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Metacafe, Dailymotion and more.

One more nice feature that comes with this add-on is that before you download any video or music, you can play it in a built-in media player.  It has both fullscreen and video smoothing capabilities too, to make your viewing experience just that much better.

Here is a video tutorial on how to get the most out of NetVideoHunter:

Now, truth be told – there are a lot of extensions out there that promise to make content downloading easy and painless, however many fail in a number of ways.  NetVideoHunter however, has yet to disappoint.  If you have your own favorite media downloader for Firefox, feel free to share!

While this extension has many good features, my favorite might be the FlashGot All.  By selecting this from the menu (or by hitting Ctrl+F3) you can grab all the links found on a current page and dispatch them to the default download manager.  Another nice feature included is the FlashGot Media option.  Watching a video on YouTube?  Quickly download it by hitting Ctrl+F7, via the right click menu or from under the “Tools” Category in your menu bar.

FlashGot might simply be the best integration/add-on for your download manager.

Once installed, all you have to do is hit the YouTube icon next to the search result link.  Instantly the video starts playing, without the need to open up a new tab or window.  Also, you can also download the video and view more information regarding the video (date added, views, rating, comments) directly from the search results.

The player can be configured to suit your needs too.  You can select player colors, player size and these additional options:

• Allow auto play
• Show player border
• Show tiny icon on the status bar
• Show download button
• Show more information button
• Choose where to show the video (next to link, under link, ect)

It is a simple extension that does a simple task very well. You can pick up GoogleTube on the Firefox Add-ons web site. 

Out of all the different, “download the video from that video sharing site” services out there – what does it feel like to be the most popular one, right now?

It’s good and that’s even better to be one of the most popular Firefox extensions overall :)

I started computing in the early 80s on a Sinclair ZX81 (2KB of RAM!) and since then, i wrote many lines of code within a lot of various projects but DownloadHelper is by far the application that got the best success. So when you write a piece of software that will be executed one million times everyday, you for sure feel useful but a bit anxious as you have the responsibility to make this code work flawlessly.

What makes Video DownloadHelper different than the other video download tools for Firefox?

There are 3 major things for an application like DownloadHelper to be successful:

First, it must be easy to use: most users must be able to use it right away after the installation without having to read a long manual.

Second, it must be reliable and work without problem is a large majority of situations. However, in this particular video downloading area, you must accept that the application won’t work in 100% of the cases users would expect it to work.

Third, it must be trustworthy and not try to spy the users, send them popups or anything of that kind, where it would be technically easy to do so and financially lucrative. And not only it must respect the users but it must be seen as such. This is were popularity is quite useful: users know that if millions other people use the application, this one must be safe.

For the case of video downloading tools, DownloadHelper is well perceived because it matches well the 3 points above, in particular it uses generic capture methods that work well in practice and do not depend on a video site implementation that could change the next day, that’s for reliability. Also, it does not resolve video media addresses through an external web site where users could suspect someone spies them upon on the videos they are watching.

Did video web sites complain about your tool being able to grab their content?

No, on the contrary, many of them ask for their site to be included in our lists.

It’s important to understand that DownloadHelper is not only a tool to grab videos to your local hard disk, but the overall project also includes a registry of more than 600 video sites which is managed mainly on the web site (http://www.downloadhelper.net/sites.php) and a bit in the extension (supported sites list). Thanks to the magic of statistics, from the data collected in the site over a large population of visitors, the lists are sorted accurately based on their quality. If a new good video web site opens, it will quickly show up in the top of the list.

This discovery feature generates everyday about 150,000 hits to those web sites. So to answer your question, a few sites requested to be removed and only 1 of them maintained this request once they understood the traffic was directed to their html pages and not directly to the media content.

Is there still room for improvement with Video DownloadHelper, or are you more focused now keeping it up and running with the most recent Firefox versions?

There is still a large functional margin with DownloadHelper and you can expect to see new great features in the near future. Amongst them, you should see:

• much smarter naming of the videos: most users would prefer downloading a file named funny_basketball_shots.flv rather than 3246874321854.flv
• video conversion parameters sharing: fine tuning the embedded converter can be tricky. As DownloadHelper users is a large population, sharing the
• configurations that work best becomes statistically meaningful
  direct access to YouTube high-quality videos
• several other features that are still secret :)

Do you have other secret Firefox-related projects?

Unfortunately, my brain is not powerful enough to handle other projects in parallel, and it’s certainly wiser to use the energy capitalizing on the popularity of DownloadHelper.

But still in the overall DownloadHelper context, the next big step is to take benefit of the exposure of the extension to help populations in Africa. It’s something to help people in developed countries getting videos, but if you can also provide a more significant support to people in need, then why not doing so ? I am currently discussing with associations to have that in place in late September or October.

How many people are contributing to the DownloadHelper project ?

About 2 millions daily users making suggestions and reporting issues (not all of them fortunately !), 800 beta-testers, 20 translators, ~10 advisers and 1 making the decisions and the coding.

What made you want to create the add-on for Firefox?

Basically the need for it.

In summer 2006, I wanted to download a video file out of YouTube. The only Firefox extension that was available at that time was really not good. As I developed several Mozilla extensions in a professional context, I had the technical expertise to do better, which I did in a week-end. The first day it was published on addons.mozilla.org it downloaded 2000 times which I found very high. I now have other figures in mind to talk about success :)

What other Firefox add-ons out there really impress you?

I like small extensions doing a simple job well, like Download Statusbar, Mouse Gesture Redox, Table2Clipboard.   And also as a web developer, I could not live without Javascript Debugger (Venkman), Firebug and Web Developer.

Have a hidden talent of being able to walk people through something?  Coming from the web hosting world, screencast tutorials are nothing new to me – see them used every day.  Now there is a new contest from Mozilla that will get you involved with sharing knowledge via your own desktop tutorial.

Here are a few more details about the contest:

Get ready to participate in the Firefox Screencasts contest! This is your chance to use your talents and passion for Firefox to create screencast support videos for the Firefox Support (SUMO) knowledge base.  We have prepared a list of the top 100 most popular support articles from the SUMO knowledge base and ask YOU to create screencasts for one, two, three, or all of them!  You can enter as many screencasts as you like.

Help your fellow Firefox fans and participate today!

+ Download and Learn More About Media Pirate!

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