Not really a music question but about bandwidth used in streaming versus downloading and watching offline. I guess it is about computers and here is where the experts are that might know the answer..
 
Trying to save bandwidth to avoid fines for over runs. YouTube has great music videos which can either be watched streaming or downloaded to watch offline.
Is there a savings one way or another, or is the usage about the same?
 
Thanks guys,
John

If you pick to use SD for video streaming then that'll use less bandwidth since video downloads will probably all be HD now-a-days.

Hey Fretman,
 
Thanks for this valuable advice. Streaming or downloading in a bit less HD format. Knew you guys would have an answer.
 
John

YouTube videos cannot be downloaded (unless you do it through a third party website or software). The "save" feature merely saves the location of the video url to your "Watch Later" folder.
 
If you want to watch music videos at YT while using less bandwidth, then you must choose to watch them in a low quality setting. The sound is usually the same. Just the video quality will be less.

Thanks Wayfarer,
 
All is the resolution.
I've moved away from the Freemake and a couple other downloaders to Free Download Manager to get the Youtube stuff for offline viewing.
 
https://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
 
John

Downloading in low quality uses about the same bandwidth as streaming in low quality. The only difference is that once you've downloaded it, you can watch it over and over without using the internet, so it just depends on how often you want to view a video. I sometimes download a video if it's a song I want to learn. Then I can also take it into Vegas and loop a small section at a time or even slow it down.

Another consideration could be what you're watching it on.
If i want to watch a video on my phone, i'll download it while I'm at home on WiFi to watch it later so I'm not using up the data bandwidth on my phone plan (to watch later when I'm not near WiFi).