Bookmarking and restreaming the same video content over and over can be very wasteful and inefficient, especially if you have a metered connection or limited bandwidth.
It would be better to download the video and view it later.
However, some videos are embedded to protect them from being downloaded or because they’re hosted on another website. Thus, embedded videos can be quite tricky to download. But fret not; there are numerous ways to download embedded videos from a website. This guide will explore some of the easiest and the best.
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How to Download Embedded Videos for Offline Viewing
According to Forbes, 82% of all consumer internet traffic will be dedicated to streaming online videos by 2022. While this is a fascinating stat, many users still prefer to watch content offline. In the old days, users could simply right-click on a video and save it on their computer. Unfortunately, most videos on the internet are embedded and hosted elsewhere. There are a few ways to get around this.
Using a Browser Extension
The easiest way to download videos from a website is by using a browser extension. Since each browser works differently and has its own restrictions and limitations, we’ll cover the best extensions to use for each browser.
Google Chrome:
The best extension to use for downloading embedded videos with Google Chrome is Video DownloadHelper. With over 2 million downloads, it’s the most popular video downloader extension for Chrome. After you’ve installed it from the Google Chrome Web Store, you can start downloading embedded videos by:
- Navigate to the page you want to download videos from
- Click on the Video DownloadHelper icon on your browser’s toolbar
- Click on the download button located just beneath your download
- Click on the Use browser button on the next screen
Note: If you want more features, you can elect to download the companion app. It’s completely free. It will afford you more options, such as on-the-fly video conversion. The Chrome version for the application won’t allow you to download videos from YouTube. You’ll have to use an alternate browser or method for this. We’ll cover those in the rest of this guide.
Mozilla Firefox
A version of the Video DownloadHelper extension exists for Mozilla Firefox, but we feel that there are better options. For instance, there’s Video Downloader by Flyyn. Once you’ve installed it, you can download embedded videos by doing the following:
- Navigate to the website with the desired embedded video
- Click on the extension icon on your toolbar
- Click on the download button next to the video you want to download
The media list may be populated with multiple videos. As such, it isn’t always easy to determine which is your desired video. Video Downloader allows you to play each video before you download it. Furthermore, you can download multiple video files simultaneously by selecting each and clicking on the Download Selected button.
These are just a few of the advantages that Video Downloader has over Video DownloadHelper. However, Video DownloadHelper for Firefox Browser has support for downloading Youtube videos. Video Downloader does not.
Browsers like Torch have built-in video downloaders. Although it has been discontinued, users can still find older versions online. However, we would not recommend this as Torch browser has reportedly been marked unsafe by users due to various privacy breaches in the past.
Nevertheless, most browsers have video downloader extensions on their respective web stores. You can also download third-party .crx files, zips, scripts that add the functionality required to download embedded videos with your browser. But you have to be careful when doing so as these are not always secure.
Using JDownloader
If you’re uncomfortable with altering your browser, you can use a third-party application to download embedded videos from websites. One of the best free and safe options you have is Jdownloader 2.0. It’s a free (mostly open-source) download manager with a powerful link-crawler that allows you to rip files from websites.
Note: JDownloader requires Java 1.8 to run. Make sure you have downloaded and installed it before attempting to install JDownloader.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed JDownloader, you can rip and download embedded videos from websites by:
- Run the JDownloader
- Copy the URL of the web page with the embedded video
- Wait for JDownloader’s link crawler to find the embedded video files. If available, select the desired video quality
- Right-click on the video and select Start downloads
Using a Web Application
Thanks to the popularization of cloud computing and software-as-a-service, you no longer need to download and install as many desktop applications. Most of what you need can be found on a web-based application hosted online. There is a litany of websites out there that allow you to download embedded videos.
Two of the most popular are Savefrom.net and Fetchfile.net. Since Fetchfile has the most free features, we’ll use it for this example. To download embedded videos using Fetchfile.net, do the following:
- Copy the link of the web page with the embedded video
- Paste it into the Fetchfile text field
- Click on the Download video button
- Wait until Fetchfile grabs all the links to embedded videos on the page
- Look through the list of the videos, select the quality and encoding, then click on the Download video button next to each
Fetchfile also allows you to save videos directly to dropbox. So if you’re running out of space on your device, you can use this as an option.
In Summary
Of course, there are other ways to download embedded videos from websites, such as viewing the source code and tracing the video to its host. However, we feel that this is overcomplicated and highly inefficient.
There is also a plethora of alternative browser extensions, websites, and desktop applications you can use to download videos. Nevertheless, we felt that the listed solutions in this guide were the safest and easiest to use. Of course, you can use this guide as a starting point until you cultivate methods of downloading videos that you’re comfortable with.
If you have any suggestions or queries, please leave them in the comment section below. As always, thank you for reading.
