14 DAY TRIAL // Downloading video clips from online sources like YouTube or others of this sort is not something actively supported by said websites, and it's easy to see why, and this is the reason apps like ClipGrab exist.
If you are a Google Chrome fan, for example, you will find that Google doesn't allow any kind of extension in its store that can facilitate the download of clips from Youtube or such online sources. You might find some third-party extensions that can do this, but it's not a good idea to install stuff from third-party stores. Things are a little bit different on Firefox, which has a ton of add-ons that can handle this type of job.
In fact, the Linux platform has quite a few of these applications available right now. Some of them are commercial, other free, and there is, of course, the terminal version, named youtube-dl. One of the problems with these apps is that developers need to update them all the time because the websites will often make changes that turn applications obsolete. It can be some minor fix or an API change, but the end result is pretty much the same. Granted, stuff like that hasn't been done in a while with YouTube, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen again.
Installation
ClipGrab has a really nice website, and downloading the application is quite easy. The makers of ClipGrab provide a single archive, which, in fact, holds a single binary file. The application runs with just a double click and seems to integrate well in the system.
I tested ClipGrab in Ubuntu 15.10, and that means that I encountered a little problem, but it's not the application's fault. The distribution is not yet stable, and the new OS is not supported in the PPA, at least for now. On the other hand, I can run it with just a double click, and the only inconvenience is that I don't get any new updates when they are released.
In any case, if you want to install the application in Ubuntu, via a PPA, you will need to have anything less than Ubuntu 15.10. Just enter these commands in a terminal near you (don't forget that you need to have root):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install clipgrab
Usage
There are a couple of ways of using this application. It has a tabbed menu, and the first entry is named Search, so you can use that to find the video that you want. You don't have to open an Internet browser for it. The second method is to get the link from the browser and enter it in the second tab named Downloads.
Users can choose what kind of format they want to have, the quality of the video, and the location of the file. It's worth pointing out that, if you have FFMpeg installed on your system, you can also convert the files to a few other formats.
The Third tab gives users some basic options like metadata download, ignore SSL, clear download list, and a few others. It's extremely easy to use, and users shouldn't have any trouble with it.
