Downloading any source from its link

One field, because the reading is always the same job

Whatever address you hand over, the work on our side has one shape: open the address, read what the page serves, and report the media files behind it. A short vertical post and a two-hour recording are read by the same routine, so there is no menu of sources to choose from before you begin.

What changes is the answer. The number of rows, the spread of sizes, and whether an audio row appears at all depend entirely on what the source published. The three sections below describe the three result shapes you will meet.

A social clip returns a short list of small files

Clips posted to social platforms are encoded once or twice for phone screens. Analyze on one of those addresses usually returns two or three rows, none of them large, and the resolutions sit close together.

Because the numbers are small, the decision is small. The top row on a vertical clip is frequently under 50 MB, which sits inside the free ceiling with room to spare. Take it and move on rather than comparing rows that differ by a few megabytes.

A long-form host returns a wide ladder

Sites built around long video publish a full ladder of encodings so that a viewer on a poor connection still gets a picture. Analyze on one of those addresses returns rows from a low resolution up to whatever the uploader supplied, and the size column stretches a long way across that ladder.

Here the choice is real. On a long recording the difference between the second row and the top row can be several hundred megabytes for a picture that looks the same on a laptop screen. A separate audio row often appears as well, because these hosts store the sound apart from the picture.

• Read the size column before the resolution column when the recording runs over an hour.
• A row over 150 MB needs Pro on this site, so on a long source the second or third row is often the row that completes on a free account.
• An audio row on a long recording is a fraction of the size of any video row, which is the row to take when you only want the talking.

A direct file address returns one row

Some addresses point at the file itself rather than at a page around it. Those end in an extension such as .mp4 and have no player, no title, and no suggestions beside them. Analyze reads one file there, so the result is a single row.

Nothing is missing when that happens. A direct address describes one encoding, and one encoding is one row. The size shown is the size of that file, and pressing Download file on it starts the transfer immediately because there is no page to interpret first.

Comparing the three lists side by side

Put the three results next to each other and the pattern is easy to hold. A social clip gives you a few small rows and little to weigh. A long-form host gives you a ladder, a size decision, and often a separate audio row. A direct file gives you one row and no decision at all.

Knowing which of the three you are looking at tells you how much attention the results deserve. Two of them are a glance. One of them is worth ten seconds.

What all three have in common when nothing comes back

An empty list means the same thing on every kind of source: the address does not have one video file behind it that we can read. A sign-in wall, a paywall, a deleted post, or an address that names a collection rather than an item all produce that result.

The fix is also the same in every case. Open the address in a fresh tab, confirm one video plays there without you signing in, and copy the address the browser shows once it is playing.

Related pages

• Trying a site you have never used before
• Using the size figure to plan a download
• Choosing between resolutions on a long ladder
• Taking the audio row instead of the picture
• What the tool does after you press Analyze