Website video downloader

The page you are on is not where the video lives

A news article, a training course, a company product page, a forum thread, a documentation page, or a local council notice shows a video without being a video service. In nearly every one of those cases the file sits on a different machine and the page displays it through an embedded player, the same way a photograph on a page can be stored on another server.

That split is why the address in your bar and the address of the video are two different things. It also explains the order of the steps below: start with the address you have, and go looking for the host only when the first attempt comes back with nothing.

Start with the article address

Copy the address of the page you are reading, straight out of the browser bar, while the video is on screen. Paste it above and press Analyze. Vidzilla opens that page the way a browser does, including the player the page loads, and reports the video files it finds. This works often enough that it is worth doing first every time.

What comes back is a list of real files with a resolution and a size in megabytes on each row. Choose one and press Download file.

When the page address returns nothing

An empty list means the file was not readable from the article, and the next move is to find the address of the video itself rather than the address of the page around it.

Right-click on the player. Many embedded players put the name of the service they belong to in that menu, along with an option that opens the video on its own site. Take that option, wait for the video to start playing there, then copy the address you have landed on and paste that instead. If the menu is a plain browser menu with no service name in it, look under the player for a title, a credit line, or a small logo, because those are usually links to the same place.

Video that only appears once you do something

Plenty of pages hold the video back until the visitor acts. The page loads with a still image and a play triangle, and the player itself is fetched only when that image is clicked. Other pages load the video when you scroll far enough down that it enters the screen. A video inside a slideshow, a carousel, or a set of tabs is loaded when you move to that panel.

In all of those cases, do the action first and copy the address afterwards. Click the thumbnail and let the video begin. Scroll until it starts. Open the tab or advance the slideshow to the panel that holds it. If the address in your bar gained an extra part when you did that, copy the new version, because that part often names the video you triggered.

A preview clip instead of the full video

Some sites publish a short sample and keep the full recording for members, buyers, or students who are signed in. The sample is a genuine public file, so Analyze reads it and reports it correctly, and you get a thirty-second file rather than the hour you expected.

Check the size and the duration on the row before you download. A file far smaller than the video you were watching is the preview. The full version sits behind the sign-in, and Vidzilla holds no account on that site, so there is nothing further to read. That is a limit of the source, not of the download.

Pages where nothing comes back at all

Three situations end the attempt, and recognising them saves a second and third try that cannot succeed.

• The page requires a login before the player loads, as with a paid course, an internal company site, or a subscription publication.
• The video was pulled from the article after publication, leaving the player frame and no file behind it.
• The page is a list of stories or lessons rather than one item, so there is no single video on it. Open the individual article or lesson and use that address.

Related pages

• The main video downloader
• Which kinds of links produce a file
• Downloading from an unfamiliar site
• Get an MP4 out of an address
• Sites Vidzilla can read