Vimeo downloader

What this page reads

Vidzilla is an independent website and has no association with Vimeo. It opens the address you give it the way a browser does and reports the video files that page is serving to the public.

That means a video anyone can watch without signing in can be read here. Copy the address while the video is on screen and paste it above. A channel page, a portfolio page, a showcase, or a group listing holds several videos and no single file, so open the one video you want first.

Videos this cannot open

A large share of the material on Vimeo is deliberately restricted by the person who uploaded it, and those restrictions hold here.

• A video protected by a password serves the password form instead of the file, so nothing is readable behind it.
• A video sold as a rental or a purchase is delivered only to an account that has paid for it.
• A video marked private, or limited to people the creator follows, is not served publicly at all.
• A video that has been deleted or made unavailable in your region returns an empty list, which is the accurate answer rather than an error.

Videos that only play on the creator's own site

Vimeo lets an uploader restrict a video so that it plays only where the creator has embedded it. A film studio, a photographer, a design agency, or a wedding videographer will frequently set a video that way, so it plays on their website and nowhere else. Open the address on Vimeo directly and the page tells you the video is private or unavailable.

In that case the embedding page is the address to use. Go to the creator's own page where the video actually plays, let it start, copy that page's address out of the browser bar, and analyze that. Vidzilla reads the page around the player, and the domain restriction is satisfied by the page itself.

Choosing between the resolutions on offer

Work published here is usually encoded carefully, and the results list often carries several clean rungs from 360p up to 1080p or 2160p. Each row is a separate file with its own resolution and its own size in megabytes, so the choice is a real one rather than a label.

• For an archival copy, or a master you want to keep, take the largest row. It is the highest quality the creator published, and a download cannot exceed it.
• For a copy you will edit, colour, or cut into something else, take the largest row as well. Every re-encode starts from the file you gave the editor.
• For showing a piece to a client on a laptop, a 1080p row carries the detail without the size of a 2160p master.
• For watching on a phone or a tablet during a flight, a 720p row looks the same in your hand and leaves room on the device.
• When two rows report the same resolution, the heavier one was encoded at a higher bitrate and holds together in grain, smoke, and fast camera moves.

The work belongs to the person who made it

Much of what is posted on this platform is professional work: short films, documentaries, showreels, commissioned commercials, wedding films, and course material. Downloading a copy for yourself is a different act from republishing it, cutting it into your own upload, or using it in a piece of client work.

Ask the creator before you use someone else's footage in anything you publish or sell. Many of them list contact details or licensing terms under the video, and a request costs nothing. Keep the credit with the file when you pass it on to a colleague.

Downloading and file size

Press Download file on the row you chose and the transfer begins. High-resolution work from this platform runs large, and a long piece at full resolution is where free use meets its file size ceiling. The page tells you before the transfer starts rather than stopping partway, and from there you can take a lower row or move to Pro, which raises the limit and removes the advertising.

Keep this tab open until the file finishes. On a desktop it lands in your Downloads folder, and on a phone in device storage or the Files app.

Related pages

• Further notes on Vimeo downloads
• Picking a resolution and a bitrate
• Getting the file onto your computer
• Video embedded on a creator's own site
• How Vidzilla reads a page