OpenDownloader is another nice way to archive online video locally
A couple of years ago I mentioned the Cobalt.tools site as being a nice way to download video, audio and pictures from various streaming sites to your computer. In an increasing ephemeral online content this is something you should do where possible for anything that’s truly important to you.
More recently, a person involved in developing another such tool, OpenDownloader, kindly reached out in order to share news of their similar tool. It’s free, open source, ad-free, tracker-free, works in a web browser, and you don’t need an account.
To quote their site:
OpenDownloader is a free, open-source video downloader that runs in your browser and saves audio too. The open-source alternative to Video DownloadHelper and 4K Video Downloader. Paste the link to a video, audio file or stream and it is saved to your computer. Interrupted downloads pick up where they stopped, and every finished file is checked with a SHA-256 digest read back off disk.
If you don’t mind installing an app, it can even download torrents.
There’s also a few more niche tools that can work on local content you already saved:
- Remux .ts segments into MP4
- Extract the audio from an MP4
- Convert a video or audio file (i.e. to another file format)
- Convert or translate subtitles
- Make subtitles from speech (which involved temporarily downloading a local AI model in your browser, which seems like a cool idea)