How to download an embedded private Vimeo video

Question

Given an embedded private video with the player URL, e.g. https://player.vimeo.com/video/874566064

How can I download the video for offline viewing?

Answer 1

Vimeo serves video and audio separately and in chunks. The URLs seem to contain short-lived tokens that are only available to you when you are authorized to view the video.

1. Go to the Network tab of your browser's Developer Tools
2. Hit the play button
3. Search the network log for video and audio
4. Get the respective URLs* and strip away the query parameters, e.g. https://6vod-adaptive.akamaized.net/.../parcel/video/466552c7.mp4
5. Download video and audio (e.g. using wget <URL> -O <audio|video>.mp4)
6. Merge video and audio with ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -i audio.mp4 -c copy video_audio_merged.mp4

* Often, don't use the very first URL that appears, but the file that appears most often (i.e. 466552c7.mp4 in the screenshot above). The URLs correspond to the video resolution and the player will adjust it to your network connection.

Answer 2

I was able to download such an embedded private Vimeo video using the Video DownloadHelper extension for Firefox in private mode. By the way, the extension is available also for Chrome