Brightcove video downloader

Where a Brightcove player actually sits

Brightcove is video software that organisations pay for so they can run a player on a site of their own. There is no public catalogue of Brightcove videos to browse the way you browse a consumer video site. Each video lives inside a page owned by a broadcaster, a bank, a manufacturer, a conference organiser, or a training department.

That changes what you go looking for. You are not hunting for a video page on a video host. You are standing on an ordinary company page, and the player is one element in the middle of it.

The address to copy is the article, not the player

Open the article so the player is on screen, then copy the whole address out of your browser bar. That address belongs to the company site, and it is the one this page wants. Analyze loads the page the way a browser does, finds the player embedded in it, and reports the video files the player is configured to hand out.

Right-clicking on the player and copying a link from the menu gives you an address for the player frame instead of the page around it. Certain players return a share address that only reopens the same article. Starting from the article address covers both of those cases.

• An article, product page, or press release carrying one player: paste that address.
• A newsroom index or a resource library listing dozens of recordings: no single file sits behind it, so open the item you want first.
• A page where the player only draws after you press a tab or dismiss a notice: do that, wait for the player to appear, then copy the address the page has settled on.

Players restricted to one account or one domain

The account holder decides where their player is allowed to run. A player configured for a single domain refuses to serve video to any other address, and that is a setting on their account rather than a defect in your link. Vidzilla asks for the page it was given, so a player fenced to an internal address hands back nothing here.

Employee portals, customer academies, and investor sections usually add a login on top of that. Our servers carry no account on that company's site, so the sign-in screen is what gets read. An empty result in either case is the accurate answer.

What a locked player gives back

A restricted player does not announce the restriction. The page loads, the frame draws at the right size, and the rectangle where the video belongs stays blank or carries one short line from the player. The results list is empty because the page served no files.

One check separates the two possibilities. Open the same page in a private browser window with no session behind it. If the video plays there, the page is public and the address is worth pasting here. If the player asks you to sign in, or the frame stays dark, the block sits on their side and nothing on this page reaches past it.

Reading the rows a business player serves

Corporate video is published as a small set of fixed encodings, so the results list holds a handful of rows with tidy resolutions and a size in megabytes beside each one. Recorded talks and training modules run long, and a long runtime at a tall resolution produces a heavy file.

Free use covers three downloads a day and single files under 150 MB. A forty-minute session taken from the top row passes that ceiling. Take a middle row when the copy is for reference, or take Pro, which lifts the daily limit and the size ceiling and removes advertising. A prepared file expires on a short timer, so leave this tab open and let the transfer finish.

Permission on video a business published

Material an organisation publishes belongs to that organisation. A marketing clip anyone can watch is still their work, and watching it is separate from permission to republish it, cut it into something of your own, or pass it to a client.

Vidzilla is an independent site with no relationship to Brightcove and none to the companies running players on their pages. Ask the owner when your use goes past keeping a copy for yourself.

Related pages

• Save video from a Wistia player
• Keep a Vidyard recording as a file
• Video embedded on an ordinary website
• See what media a page is serving
• Downloading from a SproutVideo page