Page address or media address

Two addresses lead to the same video

The address you see in the bar while you watch something is the page address. It belongs to a document with a title, a description, comments, and a player sitting in the middle of it.

The file the player pulls in has its own address, and that is the media address. It is written inside the page rather than shown to you, and it points at bytes rather than at a document. Both lead to the same video, and they behave differently when you paste them here.

The page address is what you see while watching in a normal tab. The media address is a direct file URL the player fetches behind the scenes, often with signatures that expire. Paste the page address unless you already hold a fresh direct file link and understand it will stop working later.

The page address is the one to paste

Paste the page address. Analyze reads that page the way a browser does and reports every video file the page is serving, so you get a set of rows with a resolution and a size in megabytes on each one and you pick from them.

That is the whole benefit of the page address: choice. The page knows about all of its own encodings, so the results can offer you a small copy and a large copy of the same video, along with an audio-only row when the source publishes audio separately.

Tracking parameters on a page address usually do not block Analyze. Truncating the video id does.

What a media address looks like

A media address usually ends in a file extension, and it often carries a long run of characters that were generated for one viewing session. Opening it in a browser starts playback in a bare window with no page around it, which is the clearest sign of what you are holding.

• Page address: a readable path, a title or an identifier, and a full page around the player when you open it.
• Media address: a file extension near the end, a bare player when opened, and no title, description, or comments.
• Media address on a delivery host: a host name that differs from the site you were watching on.

When the media address is the one worth using

Two situations make it the better paste. The first is a video with no page of its own: a player embedded in an article, a file linked from a content system, or a video referenced by a feed. There is no watch page to fall back on, so the file address is what you have.

The second is a page that returns an empty list while the video plays for you. If you can reach the file address, pasting it goes around the page entirely and reaches the bytes directly.

What changes in the results

A page address produces a list. A media address produces one row, because that address serves exactly one encoding and there is no set to choose from. The size on that single row is the size of the file you get.

So the trade is choice against directness. When the page address works, it gives you options. When it does not, the media address gives you the one file the player was using.

The catch with a media address

Many media addresses are issued for one session and stop working shortly afterwards. A copy you saved into a note last week reaches nothing today, and that is the address expiring rather than a fault at either end.

The fix is to go back to the page, let the player start, and take a current file address. If the page itself works here, paste the page address instead and let the results be rebuilt for you.

Keep this tab open until the browser finishes writing the file for download video url. A prepared file only waits a short time before it expires from the temporary store.

Related pages

• Saving an MP4 file straight from its address
• Video that lives inside an article
• Finding the right link to copy
• How a page is read and listed