Embedding YouTube videos into blogs is all very well, but their flv video player sucks.  You can't customize it and your stuck with their 'YouTube'  branding.  I recently came across a little known freeware application entitled YouRipper which changes all that.  YouRipper is basically a YouTube video ripper and downloader and while there is nothing new there, the authors dropped an Embed Video feature into the latest version.  So now, using a freeware flv video player YouRipper will churn out the HTML or Javascript which can then be pasted into a blog or webpage.  A bit like this.... 

The publishers of YouRipper even host the Flash even host the the flash flv player, so if the end-user does not have hosting available, they can use the player from their site.

The whole process of embedding a video using YouRipper takes less than two minutes and here's how I did it....

The above toolbar sits on the web browser title-bar (it works with most browsers).  When you come across a video you want to embed, just copy the URL of the YouTube page (eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ULVQOneeZE ) into the URL Box on the toolbar.

To obtain the actual location of the flv file simply click on the File Properties Button

It takes a few seconds to obtain this information and then the File Properties are displayed (below)

Next, clicking on the 'Get Script' button will open a window prompting you to enter the type of scripting you want to create (below)

You will notice from the above image that you can also create Playlists which is really cool, but for now I am going to create a Single Video Player.

After clicking on the 'Continue' button, you will be presented with the flv Player Configuration window (below)

As you can see, it is easy to set the size, colors and other settings for the flv video player.  Adding a Link to the player means that page will be loaded into a new browser window, if the end-user clicks on the video screen.  And adding an Image URL sets the picture to show when the video is not playing.

Once your settings are in place, you will notice that it is possible to Generate both Javascript and HTML.  For most blogs and MySpace pages, you will need to select 'Generate HTML' (below)

Clicking on the Copy button will transfer the HTML code onto your Clipboard, ready for you to Paste into your blog.....THAT'S IT!