Google Video, iFilm, MySpace, Current TV, YouTube and all the hundreds of similar video sites all have one thing in common – making it difficult for you to archive the movies they host on your local machine for later playback. In some cases this is by design, but mostly it’s the nature of using Flash for video playback. There have always been ways to download these movies and store them for personal use later, but the methods change and some sites are more complicated than others when it comes to grabbing a movie and keeping it on your local machine. Chris pointed me to KeepVid not long ago and I’ve been putting it through the paces ever since. At this point in time, it’s the best solution for grabbing movies from most sites on the Internet, short of actually investing in one of those apps that sniffs out movies and wholesale downloads everything on a site. I like KeepVid so much that it’s the only thing I’ll recommend when people ask me how to download movies from YouTube. Of course playing back Flash movies locally requires some additional software. VLC Player works in some cases, but it’s still buggy in the Flash department. SWF.max is the best looking player of the bunch, with the ability to show thumbnail previews of Flash movies along with simple playback controls and the onboard ability to download Flash movies, but those averse to actually paying for software might reject the affordable $14.95 and opt for an inferior solution.