Which websites this actually reads

The pages that behave like ordinary pages

A page qualifies when it serves a video file to anyone who opens it. News sites, blogs, forums, hobby sites, company pages, video hosts large and small, and the social platforms all publish that way. The player on the page fetches a file from a server, and that file is the thing this tool reports back to you.

This is the majority of video on the web by a wide margin. You do not have to recognise the host, and there is no list to consult first. Paste the address of the page the video plays on, press Analyze, and the rows that come back tell you what exists.

Licensed streaming services keep their catalogue sealed

Subscription film and television services deliver their catalogue under a licence agreement with the studios that made it. The video is encrypted on the way to your screen and decoded inside the player by a key that belongs to that session. There is no published file sitting behind the page for anyone to read.

That construction is deliberate and it holds for every visitor, including you while you are paying for the service. Analyze on one of those addresses returns an empty list. The service's own download button inside its own app is the route that exists for that catalogue.

Members-only pages serve the wall instead of the video

Course platforms, subscription communities, internal company portals, and any page that checks a login before it plays anything belong here. When our servers open that address they are treated as a visitor who has not signed in, so the page they receive is the sign-in prompt rather than the lesson.

Your own membership does not travel with the address. Pasting a link you can watch while signed in produces nothing, because the address alone carries no proof of who you are. Those platforms usually publish an offline option inside their own app for members who want a copy.

A broadcast in progress has no finished file yet

A live stream is written out in short segments while it happens. There is no complete file to hand over, because the end of the recording has not been produced. Analyze on a live address returns nothing useful for that reason.

The same address changes character once the broadcaster stops. Many platforms publish the finished recording at that address, or at a new one under a recordings or past broadcasts heading. Wait for the broadcast to close, reload the page, and copy the address the finished recording plays on.

Sorting a page into one of the four before you paste

You can tell which category you are in without opening this tab. The check takes a few seconds and saves you a puzzled minute afterwards.

• Open the page in a private browsing window. If the video plays there, it is an ordinary page and it will be read.
• If a sign-in form appears in that window, the page is members-only for our servers too.
• If the page carries a live badge, a viewer count, or a red dot, the recording has not finished being made.
• If the site sells a monthly subscription to a film and television catalogue, the video is under a licence and stays inside that service.

Reading an empty list as an answer

An empty result is information rather than an error. It reports that the address you handed over has no readable video file behind it, and one of the three categories above accounts for nearly every case. Pressing Analyze a second time on the same address produces the same answer.

When the page is ordinary and the list is still empty, the usual cause is the address itself: a channel, a search result, or a profile in place of the single video. Open the one video you want, let it start playing, and copy the address from the bar at that moment.

Related pages

• Trying a host you have never used before
• Pages that hold no single video file
• Video published on a site that is not a video site
• Saving a broadcast after it has finished
• What free use includes