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How to & Tips
Convert Video
by Vita
Updated on Mar 28, 2023
In this article, we will walk you through the process of downloading videos with VLC and give solutions to the common problems you may meet during the download task. For those who think it inconvenient to download video with VLC, try this free VLC downloader alternative and follow the easy guide in part 4:
Best Free Video Downloader for Windows
1. Download 720P/1080P/4K/8K videos from online streaming sites;
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3. Record streaming videos with audio in high quality;
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VLC supports downloading playable videos from the Internet. For example, you can use the VLC video downloader to download videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Liveleak, Dailymotion, BBC, Twitch, etc. All you need is to make use of the video streaming feature of VLC. The following part will share the detailed steps.
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Please note that it’s not legal to download any copyrighted content for commercial purposes. Before you download content online, you’d better check out whether the sources are copyrighted.
Step 1. Run VLC media player. After the installation, click the traffic cone icon on your desktop to open VLC media player.
Step 2. Enter the network streaming section. On the main screen, select Media > Open Network Stream….
Step 3. Copy and paste the video URL. Open the web page of the video you want to download and copy the URL address of the video. Then, paste the URL into the “Please enter a network URL” box.
Step 4. Choose Stream option. Click on the inverted-triangle button next to Play, select Stream. On the Stream output window, select Next.
Step 5. Specify the output name and destination. Then, you will see a new interface, in which select Add > Browse to specify the output destination and file name. Select Next to continue.
Step 6. Choose an output format. Open the drop-down format menu and Select Video – H.264 + MP3 (MP4), which means that the output video will be saved in MP4 format with H.264 video codec and MP3 audio codec. Meanwhile, make sure the Active Transcoding option is enabled. After the settings, hit Next.
Step 7. Start streaming & downloading. Select Stream and the VLC video downloader will start downloading the video. When the process bar on the main screen moves to the end, the download process will be finished and you can find the downloaded file in the folder you specified before.
1. After you copy and paste the video URL into VLC, instead of selecting Stream at step 4 as the method above shows, you can also directly select Play option to play the video in VLC.
2. During the playback, on the top menu bar, go to Tools > Codec Information. Then copy the full URL from the Location filed.
3. Open your browser, paste the URL into the address bar, and hit Enter.
4. The video would be displayed on the web page. Right click on the video and select Save Video as. In this way, you can save the video to your computer.
How to Easily Download Online Videos
If you’re looking for a more direct way to download online videos, WonderFox Free HD Video Converter Factory is your best option. The program will help you fast download 720p/1080p/4K/8K videos by simply copying and pasting URL. And it supports downloading videos from YouTube, Facebook, Dailymotion, Instagram, and more 500 websites.
Oftentimes, people have encountered video download failure with VLC media player and get the error message of “Your input can't be opened: VLC is unable to open the MRL”. Here is a well-tested solution for this issue so as to download video with VLC successfully.
Step 1. Uninstall VLC media player completely.
Step 2. Download the latest VLC from this page: https://nightlies.videolan.org/
Select your computer operating system to download the file. Here takes 64-bit Windows as an example to explain the process.
Step 3. Unzip the zip file, and you will get an installation folder containing multiple folders. go to lua > playlist > copy the youtube.luac file.
Step 4. Reinstall the VLC media player from the official VLC website: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
Step 5. On your computer, go to C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\
Step 6. You will find the VLC installation folder. Head to lua > playlist; delete the youtube.luac, and paste the copied "youtube.luac" from the VLC 4.0 beta installation folder.
VLC video downloads is not complex but it brings up errors oftentimes. You may meet some unexpected bugs during usage of the download feature. After all, VLC media player doesn’t function as a dedicated video downloader that can catch up with every change of video websites. If you need an easier way to download online videos, here is the highly recommended option – Free HD Video Converter Factory. It can help save streaming videos from most sites without a problem. Let’s take a closer look at how easy and effective it can be for video download.
Before start, please free downloadfree download and install the video downloader on your computer.
Run Free HD Video Converter Factory, go to Downloader, select + New Download section.
Open the web page of the video, copy its URL address, go back to the program, and paste the URL into the Paste URL input field.
Hit the Analyze button to scrape video from the link.
Free HD Video Converter Factory will list all resolution & format options you can download. Choose the preferred one and click on OK.
Click the Download All button to initialize the process. It will quickly finish downloading.
In Summary
That’s how to download video with VLC. Yet, if you meet some problems with VLC that you cannot solve, use the VLC video downloader alternative instead. Just download it and try for yourself.
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WonderFox HD Video Converter Factory Pro
The built-in YouTube playlist downloader of HD Video Converter Factory Pro offers a convenient solution to save YouTube videos from a playlist and even channel. Meanwhile, it supports video/audio files to 500+ formats and devices conversion. Get the software to make it easier to download streaming videos.
