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Q: My granddaughter performed in a musical program and the video is on YouTube. I wanted to download to a DVD so I emailed it to myself and put it on a flash drive, then put it on a DVD, but it won’t play.  Is it possible to do this?

– LeRoy T.
Navarre, Florida

A: LeRoy, after I received your question I e-mailed you for more information, but after waiting a month and hearing nothing back, I’ve decided to go ahead and answer your question, because I think this is a fairly common desire among computer users nowadays.  The basic answer to your question is “Yes, it’s possible,” but it requires several steps, a little knowledge, some special software and some practice.  Based on your e-mail in which you said you simply e-mailed it to yourself, I’m guessing you didn’t get the actual video, but rather a hyperlink, or perhaps the HTML from the page in which the video is embedded.

YouTube (and many other sites that feature videos embedded in web pages) use a video format called .FLV (Flash Video).  By design, when your browser encounters such a video, it loads and plays it.  You need special software to download these videos rather than play them.  Search Google for “YouTube Video Downloader” and you’ll find many free ones.  Once you successfully download a video, you’ll likely end up with a file that has an .FLV extension, which will not play in the Media Player built into Windows.

The next step is to convert the video into a more common format, such as .AVI or .MPG.  Many of the YouTube downloaders offer this as an option.  If yours doesn’t, you’ll need video converter software.  My recommendation again is to Google it.

Getting it onto a playable DVD is a completely separate operation, and requires a little awareness of what you’re working with.  Older DVD players will only play DVDs that are encoded in the trademarked DVD format.  They will not play any of the many formats that computers create when you are simply using the DVD as a mass-storage device (such as DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.).  Many newer DVD players can play these formats.  Your device’s manual will tell you whether yours can.  To create a standard DVD-formatted disc that will play in any DVD player again requires special software.  Win7 includes a handy program aptly named Windows DVD Maker that should be adequate to the task, unless you’re trying to make professional-grade discs.  Others are available. I bet that by now I don’t even have to tell you how to search for them.

Q: I removed my son from my home computer after he moved out, and put all his stuff into a file folder, which is now on my desk top.  I want to put him as a user again, and put all his file into his user. How do I do that?  I am running Windows Vista, (which I don’t like, but came on the computer).

– Nancy A.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A:  First, you need to re-create a user account for him.  I’m going to guess that if you were savvy enough to delete his old account, you’ll be able to create one without step-by-step guidance.  Now, your account’s desktop folder is separate from his.  So, I would copy that directory of his files from the desktop down to a directory in the root level of the C: drive (C:\).  Then, sign in using the new account and copy the files back to their proper locations, such as Documents, Favorites, Music, etc.  How difficult this is will depend on exactly how you gathered up all his files in the first place.  If you copied the entire directory tree, simply copy it back.  If you copied all the files to a single directory, you’ll need to manually put them back into the appropriate place.

Until next week – good luck and happy computing!

– Geek