I know this thread abit old but it aint a year old, but feel what i have to put in is too small to open a new thread, hope the mods dont mind.
If your using firefox web browser its easy to download videos from sites like youtube by downloading certain add-ons like:
1.) Unplug - the best i think, problem is its not updated to work for FF3 just on FF2.
2.) Fast Video Download 1.6.1
3.) Download Embedded 0.5
4.) Video DownloadHelper 3.2.2
And you can also use a program called anyvideoconverter - which you can use to download then convert the file to a choice of several other video formats including .avi's(you need to be logged in a youtube account to do this), go check the website at
http://www.any-video-converter.com/p...or_video_free/ theres a freeware version and several other commercial offerings of which ofcourse you have more choice in video formats to convert in.
Ofcourse downloading videos from sites like youtube are a helluva easier with GNU/Linux than Microsoft windows OS'es.