With the widespread of affordable broadband service, video streaming services has become viable for ordinary users.
However, continuous video streaming could potentially strain the limited bandwidth and/or data usage quota that is enforced by the internet service provider.
Thus, sometimes you might need to download video from a video streaming site to save bandwidth and use the video offline, for example for use in-flight entertainment where no internet connection is available, or a road trip where a mobile broadband signal is limited.
Thankfully, downloading online videos is now an easy process. Various programs and online services have been developed to address this need, and one of the easiest programs to use for downloading videos is xVideoServiceThief.
The program was developed since 2007, so the stability of it has stood the test of time. Written in Qt language, the program is cross-platform, which means that the program is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.
In this article, however, we will cover the installation and usage of xVideoServiceThief in Ubuntu Linux.
Installing xVideoServiceThief in Ubuntu
First of all, as the software is written in Qt, you will need to install Qt before proceeding.
Qt is widely used to write KDE software, and as Ubuntu Linux is shipping GNOME/Unity as its default desktop environment, you might not have Qt installed on your Ubuntu Linux desktop.
Fortunately, installing Qt in Ubuntu Linux is easy through the APT package manager.
Issue these following commands to install Qt on your system:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg qtscript5-dev qt5-defaultThen, after Qt is installed in your system, you can download xVideoServiceThief from
https://www.xvideothief.com/index.php?action=downloads. The available download is for 64-bit version of Ubuntu Linux, so make sure that your Ubuntu Linux installation is 64-bit before proceeding.
After downloading, you can extract the compressed package through the graphical user interface and run the installer by issuing this command in terminal:
$ ./installThen, after installation, you can start the program from the shortcut or by using this following command:
$ ~/xVideoServiceThief/xvstUpon the first start of xVideoServiceThief, the program will download the necessary plugins for it to be able to download from various video sites.
Let the plugin installation finish, and then restart the program. Afterward, the usage of xVideoServiceThief is pretty straightforward.
Before starting your download. you can set the download location at the bottom of the program window. Then, you can add the link by clicking the “Add Video” button on the right side of the window.
The program supports a wide range of video streaming websites, such as YouTube and Vimeo. Copy the link to the dialog box, and if the site is not supported, xVideoServiceThief will throw an error message.
After entering the link, you can click “OK” and the video downloading process will start. If you want to queue the video for downloading later, you can uncheck the box “Download Videos Automatically”.
To start your queue, click “Start download”. A progress bar will be displayed to show the progress of your download. In the program window, you can also see the download speed.
If desired, you can also convert the downloaded file to various formats, like MPEG or DivX. The option to convert video is located in the “More Options” dialog box.
After the download and conversion process is finished, you will see a notification in the bottom right corner of your screen.
You can dismiss the notification and find your downloaded video in the specified folder. If you want to start another queue, you can click “Clear list” or “Clear completed” so that the list will not look cluttered.
