Downloading Videos from YouTube and Other Platforms
and Playing Them Back in Slow Motion with VLC Media Player
This article will help you get your favorite video clips from a number of video hosting websites, like Vimeo, YouTube, Dailymotion, and some others, to your device for offline viewing.
You can then take advantage of the useful features and key bindings of the VLC media player for a comfortable playback experience, some of which I share on this page.
To download a video, you can use the free online service SaveFrom.net, which supports several video hosting platforms and typically offers multiple choices of video resolutions.
If you run some flavour of GNU/Linux or BSD system on your machine, you can install the cclive package to download youtube videos using the command line, albeit it mostly downloads homemade video clips and very often returns an error if you try to download something more commercialized.
Once the video is on your computer, open it with the VLC player. Now goes the list of the default key bindings, or 'hotkeys', that will make you more productive with this player.
Controlling playback speed
- Slowing Down Playback:
[(opening square bracket) Pressing it again will slow down the playback further.- Speeding Up Playback:
](closing square bracket) When pressed again, it will speed up the playback further.- Resetting Playback Speed:
=(Returns the playback speed to normal.)
Video Playback Navigation Controls
- Jumping 3 Seconds
SHIFT-LeftandSHIFT-Right(backward and forward)- Jumping 10 Seconds:
META-LeftandMETA-Right- Jumping 1 Minute:
CTRL-LeftandCTRL-Right- Specifying Exact Time:
CTRL-T(Allows you to specify an exact time to jump to.)
Misc
- Pausing and Resuming Playback:
SPACE- Toggling Full Screen:
F- Controlling Volume:
CTRL-UpandCTRL-Down- Quitting the Player:
CTRL-Q
Certainly it is far from the complete list of key mappings, but in my opinion, these once are the most useful. To see all the hotkeys, go to https://wiki.videolan.org/Hotkeys.