Question: How to Download American Idol Videos for Free?
I am trying to download videos from ABC.com site (American Idol episodes) in HD quality. They’re all .m3u8 files. I tried using livestreamer (without encoding, but keeping original quality) but the video quality is kinda laggy. Is there any other way to download American Idol videos for free?
Answer:
Where to Download American Idol Videos and Episodes?
Currently, full episodes of American Idol 2023 are available on abc.com for free streaming. The latest episode of American Idol will be available as locked (marked with lock symbol or VERIFY TO WATCH label) on abc.com the day after it airs on TV for free on-demand streaming with your participating TV provider account signing in. If you don’t have such an account, you may need to wait another 7 days to free stream the episode without signing in when it’s unlocked.
In addition to abc.com, full American Idol episodes are also available on Hulu. If you are a subscriber of Hulu, you can also stream the latest episode the day right after it airs. Furthermore, you can also watch the clips of American Idol on its YouTube channel.
How to Download American Idol Videos and Episodes?
Though it’s easy for you to stream American Idol episodes and clips on ABC.com, Hulu and YouTube on demand, it’s hard to view the show smoothly when you are outside the United States or its territories, or the network connection has a problem. In such situations, you might want to download American Idol episodes and video clips for offline playback. How to download American Idol videos for free? This’s what we are trying to answer on this page.
Currently, there are 2 ways to save American Idol videos for free: using a professional streaming video downloader like StreamFab and CleverGet, and using a screen recorder software to record American Idol videos directly.
To download American Idol video with the professional streaming video downloader StreamFab, you can follow the steps in the tutorial on how to download ABC.com videos. The downloads of American Idol episodes will be listed under the YouTube category in the Downloading library, which means you can download American Idol episodes in up to HD 720p for completely free without quantity limits using this powerful video downloader. Besides ABC.com, this streaming video converter also allows you to download the first 3 American Idol episodes from Hulu for free. Certainly, you are also able to save American Idol video clips from YouTube using StreamFab in up to HD 720p for 100% free without quantity limits. If you need to download American Idol clips from YouTube only, besides StreamFab, you can also use YouTube Premium, Internet Download Manager (IDM), the built-in video downloader of Wondershare Free Video Converter, SaveFrom or any of the free online YouTube to MP3 converters (that also work for downloading YouTube videos).
If you just need a small part of some American Idol episode, you may need to trim the episodes downloaded by the above methods using a video trimer like the built-in video editor module in Wondershare Free Video Converter, or record just the desired segment using a video recorder software like the built-in screen recorder in Wondershare Free Video Converter. As for the steps, they are the same as those in the how-to guide on how to download ABC.com episodes by screen recording. It might be the method with the highest success rate to save American Idol videos to the local hard drive of your computer for offline playback. However, the steps may be a little more complicated and it may take more time to finish recording.
In addition to the 2 mentioned methods above, you can also turn to an online video downloader to download American Idol video clips or episodes. Till now, we haven’t successfully downloaded any American Idol videos from ABC.com using a free online video downloader. Thus, this method is not recommended. Please note that you may encounter all kinds of popups, fake buttons, ads, redirects, adware, spyware or malware when you are trying to use an online video downloader to download videos of American Idol. Moreover, free online downloaders usually have some limitations such as output quality and batch downloading, or lead you to buy their paid versions. If you try to download American Idol videos from Hulu or YouTube, success rate might be a litter higher.
If you still have any other questions like where can I download American Idol episodes and how can I save American Idol videos for offline playback, feel free to let us know by commenting in the Comments section below.