Any video downloader

Being on a list is not what makes a site work

Tools built around one platform work by recognising a host name. Feed them an address they do not recognise and they stop, whether or not the video behind it is reachable. That is why a small forum, a regional news site, or a host you found through one search result gets rejected by them and works here.

Vidzilla does not check the host name against a roster. Analyze opens the address the way a browser opens it, watches which video files the page hands over, and reports them. A page that gives a browser a playable file gives Analyze the same file. A page that gives a browser a login form gives Analyze the same login form.

The check that settles it in thirty seconds

You can answer the question yourself before you paste anything, and the test costs nothing.

Open a private or incognito window. That window carries none of your cookies and none of your sessions, so it stands in the same position our servers do. Paste the address of the video into it and watch what loads.

• The video plays on its own: the address works here. Copy it out of that window and paste it above.
• A sign-in form loads: the site is serving that video to accounts, not to the public. Nothing here reaches it.
• A grid of thumbnails loads: you copied a listing page. Click into the video and copy the address you land on.
• An error or a removal notice loads: the file is gone from the host and no tool retrieves it.

What an unfamiliar host actually changes

An obscure site changes the shape of the results, not whether results come back. A large platform publishes the same video at four or five resolutions, so you get a set of rows to pick from. A small site frequently publishes one encoding, so Analyze returns a single row. That row is the whole of what the site offers, and there is no higher version being withheld.

Small hosts also serve video through embedded players borrowed from another service. When the address of the article returns nothing, start the video, right-click the player, and look for an option naming the host it comes from. Open the video there and copy that address instead.

The five things no downloader gets past

These are properties of the video, not of the site, and moving to a different tool does not change any of them.

• Account videos: the page asks you to sign in first. We hold no credentials of yours, so the video is not served to us.
• Subscription libraries: a streaming service delivers video to paying sessions under its own protection, and there is no public file to read.
• Purchased or rented titles: the same situation with a per-title payment in front of it.
• Deleted videos: the host removed the file. An address that once worked now returns an error.
• Listing pages: a channel, profile, feed, playlist, or search result covers many videos and no single file.

Videos that need one extra click first

Two situations look like a refusal and are not. An age gate or a consent banner sits in front of the player until you dismiss it, and until then the page is not serving the video to anyone. Dismiss it in your own browser, let the video start, and copy the address the page settles on.

The other is a link that was signed for one viewer. Very long addresses carrying an expiry or a signature are issued to your session and stop working shortly afterwards. Reload the page that produced it and paste the fresh address straight away.

What you get back when it does work

The result is a list of the real files that page serves, each row carrying a resolution and a size in megabytes, so you decide with numbers in front of you rather than by guessing. Press Download file on one row and the transfer starts immediately.

There is no account, no email address, and nothing to install. A file size ceiling applies on free use and the page tells you before the transfer when a row sits above it. Pro raises that ceiling and removes advertising.

Related pages

• Saving video from a site you found today
• The kinds of link people paste, one by one
• Working through several videos in a row
• Where to copy the link from
• What Analyze can and cannot open