Hangout archive download for Gold subscribers

[nicholfd]

I'm a Gold subscriber, and I swore you used to be able to download the hangout videos.  I'm about to travel, and thought I would take some to watch while in flight.

I only see a way to stream the videos.  Was the download option removed?  Did I imagine it?  Is there a "secret" URL for Gold subscribers?  ;)

Thanks,
Frank

[jimp]

We used to host them internally but we outgrew what we could do with that method. They're hosted on Vimeo now. There are ways to download Vimeo videos though we don't have any supported/documented process to do that at the moment.

[nicholfd]

Thanks for the quick reply.  I'll look for a way to grab them form Vimeo.

Thanks,
Frank

[KOM]

A few of us complained when they made this switch but no solution was offered.

There are a number of browser plugins that will download those videos (Video DownloadHelper for Firefox works well).  I think jDownloader2 will also do it.  You can parse the javascript and extract the URLs manually (I use Notepad++ with the JSTool plugin -> JSFormat function to make the code readable).

As far as I know, there hasn't been an issue with these videos leaking to the web.  I have the entire collection here locally so I can pull one up in a pinch if required.

[nicholfd]

I tried the manual method, watching what the code/player was doing.  It looks like Vimeo was sending them in pieces (a new piece every 5-10 seconds).  Wether this was to try & prevent copying, for managing live, variable quality/resolution streaming, who knows (anyone?)

I found a decent plugin for Chrome (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/download-vimeo-videos-pre/phpaiffimemgakmakpcehgbophkbllkf) and just gave up on trying to do it myself.  The quality seems excellent.  This plug-in is free for a day, then a subscription model.  I grabbed the rest of the hangouts I didn't have and called it a day.