Reading a video link before you use it

An address is read from the left, one piece at a time

A link looks like one long run of characters, and it is really four pieces joined together in a fixed order. The order never changes, which is what makes reading one a skill you learn once.

Reading it takes a few seconds and saves the wait for a result that was never going to arrive. Each piece below answers a different question, and the questions get more specific as you move to the right.

The scheme at the front, and what it says about the connection

The first piece ends with a colon and two slashes. On a video address it reads https, and that tells you the connection to the server is encrypted.

Two other openings turn up in pasted text. An address beginning http without the s still reaches a server and still works here. An address beginning with an app name, such as one that opens a phone application directly, is not a web address at all and has no page behind it for us to read. When a paste starts with anything other than http or https, go back to the source and take the web address instead.

The machine name, including the words in front of it

After the slashes comes the name of the server. Read it from the right: the last two labels are the site itself, and anything in front of them is a section that site runs separately.

Those front labels carry information. A label such as m marks a mobile version of the same page. A label such as cdn or media marks a machine that stores files rather than pages, which tells you the address points at a file and not at a viewing page. A label you do not recognise on a site you do recognise means the video is served by a part of that site with its own rules.

The words in the path are labels the site chose

The path is everything between the first single slash and any question mark. It is split into segments by slashes, and each segment is a word the site picked to describe what follows.

Certain segments settle the question of whether one video sits at the end of the address. Words such as video, watch, clip, post, or a file extension name a single item. Words such as channel, user, profile, playlist, category, tag, or search name a collection, and a collection has no single file behind it. If the last meaningful word in the path names a collection, Analyze returns nothing, and the address of one item from inside that collection is the one to fetch.

The identifier, and how its shape gives it away

Near the end of the path, or inside the query string, sits the piece that names this video and no other. It is a run of letters and numbers with no meaning to a reader, and its length is set by the site rather than by the video.

Three shapes cover most of what you will see. A short mixed-case code of eight to twelve characters is a compact identifier. A long string of digits is a database number. A run of thirty or more characters, often with dashes, is a generated key. Copy every character of it. Dropping one character from an identifier does not point at a nearby video; it points at nothing, and the page you get back says the video does not exist.

What the reading tells you before you press Analyze

Put the four pieces together and you have a verdict. An https scheme, a site name you recognise, a path segment naming a single item, and a complete identifier describe an address worth pasting.

A collection word in the path, a missing identifier, or a scheme that opens an application describe an address that will come back empty. Fixing it at that point costs one trip back to the page the video plays on, which is faster than waiting for an empty list and then working out why.

Related pages

• Reading an address to see what it points at
• The parameters that sit after the question mark
• Page addresses compared with media addresses
• Pages that hold no single video