In this tutorial I will show how to download videos from YouTube without using any third party software. Then I will show you how to download a video even if your proxy blocks the YouTube site

1) On YouTube, go to the page of the video you want to download - for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw

2) Note the id of the video in the URL which should be after the v= which in this case is 49IDp76kjPw

3) Add the video id of the URL after video_id= in this URL - http://www.youtube.com/get_video.php?video_id=.
The URL to download the video in our example should be http://www.youtube.com/get_video.php?video_id=49IDp76kjPw

4) Once you paste the URL in your browser in your address bar and go, it will prompt you to save the file as a .HTML file. You can save the file as a HTML file and later rename it to .FLV or save it directly as an .FLV file

5) This FLV file can be played with the free FLV Player

Now for bypassing proxies. Most companies/schools block YouTube and other video uploading and sharing sites because videos mean bandwidth wastage. So if you have the URL of videos to download for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw, you can simply ping youtube.com which will give you an ip address of 72.3.222.114. Now you can download the video by typing http://72.3.222.114/get_video.php?video_id=49IDp76kjPw in the address bar of your browser.

This may or may not work for you depending on if your company has blocked the ip address of YouTube itself. Alternatively, you may try a secure and free CGI based proxy like CollegePrivacy.com.
Just type the URL http://www.youtube.com/get_video.php?video_id=49IDp76kjPw in the address bar and save the file as a .FLV file

Update: There is a new service called SecureIX that provides a free PPTP VPN connection for personal use. Now you can access any website, IRC chat rooms, online games, BitTorrent/P2P downloads from a blocked network without the need for proxy.

Update 2: Visit the page on which the YouTube video is located. Go to View>Source in Opera or Page>Source in IE and look for the following lines:

// Player stuff

function openFull()
{
var fs = window.open( "/watch_fullscreen?video_id=GTU…..&sw=0.05&fs=1&title=” +

Copy the URL after “watch_fullscreen?” till “&title=” and add http://youtube.com/get_video.php? before it.

Therefore, the complete URL would be http://youtube.com/get_video.php?video_id=video_id=GTU…..&sw=0.05&fs=1