Software for recording video from online sources

Disclaimer: No, I'm not trying to violate copyrights or pirate anything.

In preparation for the contingency of teaching remotely in the fall, I want to pull some historical footage (mostly old newsreels and such) from Youtube and make them available to students as part of a package of materials. I'm looking for a recommendation for a free (and preferably open source) piece of software that will let me do this easily, but predictably searching for this sort of thing brings up a lot of sketchy-looking options and little clarity on what's actually safe. I'm probably using a PC for this, but I have Linux and Chromebook options available if needed.

Firefox has some add-ins that do this.

It kinda sounds like copyright violation. You want to take someone else's content and use it as your own. So any tools you find are going to be aimed at that audience.

Why not embed or link the YouTube videos?

In reply to Keith Tanner :

My understanding is that because it's for nonprofit educational use and will have no impact on revenue, it falls under Fair Use, if indeed the footage is not in the public domain (and most of it should be at this point).

Embedding links is OK provided that links stay stable and the entity posting them doesn't take them down or modify them, which has burned me before. Doing it as I plan to just makes for a more cohesive, consistent package for students, some of whom struggle with technology more than you might imagine.

AFAIK you cannot modify a video once it's been posted, you can only remove it. So your main worry is about the link going dead and that will primarily happen in the case of...copyright violation :)

In reply to matthewmcl (Forum Supporter) :

Never even thought to look there, but that seems to be the answer. Thanks.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I find it hard to imagine that anyone is seriously looking for copyright violations with newsreels and public information films from the 1940s. More than once I've had archival videos posted by nonprofits and foundations disappear when the posting entity did.

Apparently you can play YouTube (and other streams online) through VLC media player as well as download or record using it. I haven't tried it but it might be worth some research to see if that will work for you and how to do it. 

In reply to adam525i (Forum Supporter) :

Hmmm, that might work too. The Firefox add-on I grabbed seems to be fine in preliminary testing, but I have and like VLC, so it's worth checking out. Nice to have a backup method, if nothing else.