HD video downloader

The top row is the ceiling

Analyze opens the page the way a browser does and reports the video files that page is serving. The largest row in the results is the highest resolution the source published, and a download cannot go past it. Nothing here adds detail that was never encoded in the first place.

So read the top row before you decide anything else. If the page serves 720p as its largest file, 720p is what you take home. A copy of the same footage at 1080p somewhere else is a different upload, made from a different master, and it has to be fetched from that page instead.

Resolution and bitrate are two separate numbers

Resolution is the pixel count: 1920 by 1080, or 1280 by 720. Bitrate is how much data the encoder spent on each second of playback. Two rows in the same list can both read 1080p and differ by a hundred megabytes, and that gap is bitrate.

The heavier of the two holds together where the picture is busy. Fast motion, rain, smoke, confetti, a crowd shot: at a thin bitrate those frames break into visible blocks. On a static interview shot the two files look close to identical, and taking the lighter one costs you nothing you would notice.

When 1080p is worth the megabytes

The decision is size against screen. A 1080p file is roughly two to three times the size of the 720p row beside it, and that trade pays off only on a display large enough to resolve the extra pixels.

• Watching on a television or a large monitor: take the largest 1080p or 2160p row. The difference is visible from across a room.
• Watching on a phone: the 720p row looks the same in your hand and takes a fraction of the storage.
• Sending the file through a messaging app: 720p arrives, and many 1080p files are refused by the attachment limit at the other end.
• Keeping a stack of videos on a laptop with a small drive: 720p across the whole stack leaves room for the rest of your work.

Files you are going to edit

If the video is raw material for something else, take the largest row available even when the finished piece will be small. Editing re-encodes the picture, and every re-encode starts from what you gave it. Cutting, colour work, captions, and cropping all compound the losses that were already baked into a light file.

This is the one case where the size on disk is not the deciding factor. Download the heavy row, edit from it, and let your editor produce the small export at the end.

When the resolution you want is not in the list

An absent resolution means the source did not publish one. The list is built from the files the page is actually serving, so a missing 1080p row is a fact about that upload rather than a gap in the results.

Two things are worth doing. Take the next row down, which is a real file and transfers cleanly. Or find another posting of the same video and analyze that address, since a second upload often carries a different set of encodings.

HD files and the free size limit

Free downloading has a file size ceiling, and a long video at full resolution is where you meet it. A ten-minute clip at 1080p sits comfortably under it. A ninety-minute recording at the same resolution does not.

When the row you selected is over the ceiling, the page tells you before the transfer starts rather than stopping halfway through. From there you can take a lower row from the same list, or move to Pro, which raises the limit and removes the advertising. Keep the tab open while a large file transfers.

Related pages

• Start with the main video downloader
• Save an MP4 from a URL
• Take only the audio from a video page
• Save a video to your computer
• How Vidzilla reads a page