How to Easily Download Video from the Web with xVideoServiceThief

Downloading videos from the Internet can feel like a bit of a drag. There are various websites that can do the job, but usually they’re short on options and slow on speed. That’s where xVideoServiceThief comes in. This surreptitiously-titled tool, which sounds like some kind of 90s computer virus, lets you download videos, instantly convert them into most major formats, and even schedule your downloads.

Here we’ll show you how to use xVideoServiceThief to turn video downloads into a walk in the park.

How to Use xVideoServiceThief

First, you’ll need to download xVideoServiceThief (xVST) from the official website. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux. While it’s essentially the same thing on all platforms, we’ll be doing our demonstration in PC, so certain details in the instructions may vary slightly.

After installing xVST, open it. (The tool itself recommends that you run as admin each time by right-clicking its app icon and clicking “Run as administrator.”) You’ll get a pop-up asking for a donation and also a pop-up asking if you want to disable “Adult sites.” This will remove all plugins relating to the download of adult content and pornography. Do with this as you please, we’re not judging, honestly.

Once you’re on the main xVST screen, you can start lining up videos for download. Click “Add video” at the top-right corner, and copy-paste the URL of the video you want to add.

The great thing is that you can queue up as many videos to download as you like this way, and xVST will download and convert them in sequence. If you want to prioritize certain videos to download over others, just right-click a video in the list, then select “Move Up” or “Move Down.” From the right-click menu, you can also pause downloads, cancel downloads, delete and rename videos, and more.

Convert Videos Using xVideoServiceThief

When you add new videos to convert, you can tick the “Override original conversion options” box to set your own video and audio parameters to convert the video to.

The default options result in pretty rudimentary-quality videos, and you can improve them here by changing the output format to “MP4 HD Format” and upping the Video resolution and Output quality.

If you want to change the default conversion settings for your future downloads, click “More options” at the bottom-right corner of xVST, then click “Basic” in the pane on the left and tick the “Convert videos to Mpeg/DivX/etc.” box. We think that the below settings are a pretty good choice for reasonably (but not remarkably) high-quality videos, but of course you can adapt them to your own needs.

Schedule Video Downloads in xVideoServiceThief

One of the better options in xVST is the ability to run the whole download/conversion process on a custom schedule, so it can all happen when you’re not using your PC.

To do this, click “More options” on the xVST home screen, then select “Schedule” in the pane on the left.

Tick the “Customize my schedule download” box, then press the green “+” icon at the bottom-right corner. Select the times you’d like to dedicate to downloading your videos, tick the “Active” box to activate your schedule, then click “OK.”

You can add as many download schedule time slots as you like using this method. Once you’re done, click “OK” to return to the xVST home screen. 

Back on the home screen you’ll see a tick next to the “Download videos automatically” box and a clock next to that. That means that videos will download in accordance with your schedule, so you can queue up as many as you like and sort their load order, but they won’t download until your scheduled times. Untick this box to disable the schedule and download videos as and when you add them.

Conclusion

That should be all you need to take your Internet video downloads into your own hands. xVideoServiceThief remains a robust app, though it could really use updates in a couple of areas like the online search function (which seems to be broken), and support for HD videos. Still, as a bitesize way to grab videos from around the globe, it’s a good option.