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One of YouTube's less endearing habits is the periodic and frequent removal of some of your favourite videos, generally on some spurious "violation" grounds, leaving you with a patently insincere "Sorry about that" blank screen message. While the user who uploaded a video has the perfect right to delete it if they so wish, I must say I find some of the so-called 'acceptable use' policy removals irritatingly arbitrary to say the least. So like many people I've been in the habit of copying many of my own favourites: a lot of other sites specifcally provide a download facility on payment of a subscription or membership fee and it's something of a mystery why YouTube hasn't - it seems like it could be a nice little earner for them?

The inevitable result of course is that quite a number of sites and programs have grown up out there which will let you copy streaming video - most for free. I've tried several over a period of time: the one I've tended to use most is Real Player, which has a nifty little 'Download This Video' toolbar which pops up alongside the clip thumbnail in your browser. Except that I've found it gives a fairly high failure rate in terms of unplayable clips, and it hardly ever works at all with anything on X-Tube.

But the other day I came across VideoGet, which I have on test at the moment. It boasts an impressive list of supported sites, and has a built-in file format converter. It's shareware and limits you to 20 downloads after which you have to pay: I've used it twice, and if I find it succeeds on another 18 where the others have failed, I shall probably shell out the $24.95 and buy a copy.