How to Download Any Wistia Video in Under 1 Minute (Tutorial)
Wistia is a great platform for creating or watching video content. While not as mainstream as YouTube or Vimeo, it is a platform that shows some promise to increase its range in the future. YouTube has many tools you can use to capture and download videos for fair use in your projects. But what about Wistia?
In this post, we’ll take a look at the steps you need to take if you want to download Wistia video content and capturing videos created for the Wistia platform. However, before moving forward, we also want to take a moment to appreciate the needs and privacy of anyone who might be using Wistia to host their video content. At the same time, sometimes there are issues with internet browsers, moments when you are offline, or when you would like to download your own videos that might be hosted on the platform.
Be sure to keep all of these best practices in mind at all times.
How to Download and Save Wistia Videos
- Go to Wistia.com and find the wistia video you want to view and download. Hit pause.
- Right-click on the front of the video screen and hit “copy link.”
- Go to a blank text file so you can save the code that you captured and right-click paste into the blank text file.
- You will see the entire HTML code. All you need to copy from the entire HTML code is the part that says, “WLink=” and the code numbers that you find after this part of the code.
- Go to fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe.
- Paste the numbers of the specific video you copied to the clipboard earlier and paste the numbers at the end of the URL.
- Highlight the entire URL after you have added the numbers at the end of the Wistia URL. Click “copy” to copy link.
- Go to a website such as clipconverter.cc and paste the URL into the download text box.
- Hit “continue” and decide which file format to save the file as.
- Save the file to your PC after the download is complete.
By following this simple process, you should have no problems when trying to download Wistia video content from their main site, or on those who are embedding the videos.
Using the GetFLV Tool
GetFLV is a downloading tool from SuperLogix that allows users to create, convert, and download pretty much any Flash videos, no matter what platform they are on. GetFLV is a shareware tool, which means you can try it for 14 days before you decide to purchase it.
Once you download the video content, you will be able to convert it to a smaller format to play on your iPhone or other mobile devices. It comes with bonus tools such as Audio Ripper and an FLV Fixer that can help repair corrupted files. This tool makes the process of grabbing Wistia videos easier and faster than other options out there.
Another Way
There is also yet another way to download videos directly from Wistia, whether it be for personal use or for business video marketing campaigns. While the process might seem a little complicating, the video below should help with walking through the process.
If you are already at the Wistia.com site, you can right-click and choose “View Page Source,” then hit “command+F” and type in the word “medias” to save time. This will allow you to see where the word “media” is highlighted which contains the video code.
Look at the detail of the HTML code and highlight and copy the code that follows the “embed” word within the video URL. This is the “video ID.” Right-click copy this video ID to the clipboard.
Go to Getvideo.at, a free conversion tool, and type in the following:
https://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/video code
Put the numbers from the video code you wish to save in the “video code” section.
Hit “search” and the search engine will find the video that you want to download.
After you download the wistia video, you must change the mime type from “.bin” to “.mp4” so that your computer will recognize it as a working video file.
This is an alternate way to convert your Wistia Flash video as a downloadable video file that you can save and watch at a later time.
Copyright Disclaimer
Remember the rules of copyright and the Digital Millenial Copyright Act anytime you download and save content from the internet. As discussed on many of the top law blogs on the internet, The Copyright Laws of the United States protect authors and content producers from having their work stolen if they are the original author or producer of the content.
Therefore, you should ask permission to download in most cases, even if you only plan to use the content for your personal use. Whether you are going to download videos for personal or commercial use, it’s all the same when it comes to user content, privacy and any existing permissions or copyright in place. This is up to the end user, the platform and you to decide upon.
Many people download content in this way to use for educational or tutorial purposes. In some cases, this is allowed. But again, you have a responsibility to ask the content producer what uses are permitted under their copyright agreement.
Look for content that has a “Creative Commons” license as most of this content is free to use in your projects. It’s also important to realize if a video is embed on a site or is using a fast.wistia.net embed iframe, they likely don’t want the video content to be downloaded or accessible elsewhere. The same is also true of on-site embedded Wistia videos.
If you are only using content for your education and use, you are less likely to experience legal issues from this technique, but you should not share the content you downloaded with others.
Sharing or Keeping?
The issue of sharing vs. keeping is important because it is usually perfectly legal to “share” content while it is still online on your social media outlets and other places. But once it is downloaded, you have additional responsibilities in asking permissions before you share it. This is because you now own a copy of someone’s original media that they may have wanted to sell. The key to doing this legally is to follow the licensing requirements of each video and never assume you know what is allowed without reading the fine print.
It’s also possible that Wistia.com also owns some of the rights of such content, so you could go through their platform when you ask permission. These are all things you will want to consider with downloaded videos and Wistia videos hosted on their platform.
The FCC has ruled that users may use a limited amount of content for their mobile devices, as long as you captured it from content you already purchased through legal means. However, downloading videos from online platforms may not meet these requirements. Visit FCC.gov to learn more.
No matter which platform you get your content from, you should go through the time of finding out what is allowed regarding saving and downloading of copyrighted media.
That being said, once you know you’re within legal rights, these methods we’ve explained should serve as a great way to quickly curate content that you want to keep or use in your projects (as allowed) through these easy-to-follow methods!
We hope this helps you to find content that you can use for yourself or your projects in the future and that it gives you more options when you find Wistia content you would like to watch from your mobile device or computer.
