"How do I download these movies?"

The number one question I see in emails is, "How do I download movies?".

Using Google
Because all of these movies are uploaded to Google, I've been advising people to download the Google player, which is free. To download the movie, you can click on the Google logo in the lower right hand corner of the player, then choose the one and only option that pops up to take you to the Google site, which brings you to the page the movie you're interested in sits on. You can choose, from there, to either embed that movie into your own personal web page or blog, or you may download the movie, provided that the party who uploaded it to Google has made the movie available for download. (Not all of these movies are uploaded by Classic Cinema Online.) If they have, you'll see a download button.

I found this video, brought to us via Google Video, by kevsvideotraining.blogspot.com which shows us how to download and use the Google video player to view and download movies, I've found it to be very helpful.


USING FLV Player
We have a viewer, David, who wrote in about the FLV player. Now, I've never used this player before, so I am not savvy on how it works.

David wrote,

. . . tell your viewers to run a google search for the flv player, or simply post the latest version of the viewer on your site. The executable can be run in a few seconds. Then when the movie has finished downloading, you can go to your temporary internet files and copy the movie to a different file. The Flv player will then play the movie offline.

I thought it was an interesting idea worth at least a look-see, so I sent him a reply to which he responded with the following:

http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467081.html

This is the link for the one that I'm currently using. It doesn't enlarge to full screen, but does pretty well within the limits of the download quality. You simply wait until the online download is complete, then while it's still on the screen, go to the temporary internet files and copy the file to another directory. It's freeware, and has been downloaded several million times, so I assume you could post it on your site without any trouble. I don't know if it's the same as google's, but it's a stand-alone program, so it's very easy to use.

Thank you for that tidbit, David, I found it quite interesting and think other viewers may benefit from it.

As of this posting, Classic Cinema Online has about 160 movies uploaded to Google, and there are about 100 that we show that are uploaded to Google by others. Since Google hosts these movies free of charge, it's befitting for us to return the favor by promoting Google with the use of their player, which bears their logo, on our site. If we find movies on other sites and show them here, we'll use those other sites' players, too, in accordance with their user terms, as this is how we give proper credit where it's due.

We realize, however, that for people to download these movies and want to watch them off line, the idea of having to use up extra space on your machines with so many different players is preposterous, so what you do on your machine for personal use is up to you and you're certainly welcome to discuss those matters and details in our forum. You're also welcome to post your comments here.

As part of our own terms of service, we do advise all viewers that downloading movies should be for personal use, and when downloading, please refer to the host site's user terms of service.