Download Vimeo VOD (video on demand)

vimeo-vod.md

How to download vimeo VOD for offline usage

Variant 1: yt-dlp

Using yt-dlp (thank you @ayyucedemirbas!)

You must have a Vimeo account, do not sign in via Google or anything else, yt-dlp asks for your email address and password to log in.

You must install the yt-dlp via the command below (for MacOS):

brew install yt-dlp

and then, when the installation is completed, you must use the command below to download the video:

yt-dlp -u [email protected] https://vimeo.com/ondemand/linktoyourvideo

It will ask for your password to log in, enter it. Your download should begin.

Variant 2: youtube-dl

Use youtube-dl directly to download the video (thanks @meepybub!) Example:

youtube-dl -u <[email protected]> "https://vimeo.com/ondemand/<video>"

Variant 3: extracting cookies

Step 1

Login to Vimeo and get the cookies.txt file using this Chrome plugin

Step 2

Use youtube-dl to download the video Example:

youtube-dl "https://vimeo.com/ondemand/<video>" --cookies cookies.txt

Variant 4: some Vimeo VOD downloader tool

I had a lot of success with this repo for private videos: https://github.com/Tusko/vimeo-private-downloader

The variant 1 is still working. Thanks a lot (and yes of course, if you have purchased the video for 48h). Searching for a solution for downloading the subtitles

subtitles → https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/tips/vimeo-subtitles-download.html#2

THIS ONLY WORKS IF YOU HAVE A VIMEO ACCOUNT. If you're signed into Vimeo via a Google, Facebook, or Apple account, the variants don't work.

Update: currently nothing works. 😢 Purchased (not rented) video, tried with user account and/or cookies.txt. It seems we're blocked by Google CDN which is hosting the video fragments.

$ youtube-dl --cookies cookies.txt -u <user> https://vimeo.com/ondemand/<video>
[dashsegments] Total fragments: 910
[download] Destination: <video>.fdash-google_mediacdn_sep-video-de62fcb4.mp4
[download] Got server HTTP error: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden. Retrying fragment 1 (attempt 1 of 10)...

Using latest youtube-dl from Github.

An update from 2024

I would like to point out a few minor details.

You must have a Vimeo account, do not sign in via Google or anything else,yt-dlp asks for your email address and password to log in.

You must install the yt-dlp via the command below (for MacOS):
brew install yt-dlp

and then, when the installation is completed, you must use the command below to download the video:
yt-dlp -u [email protected] https://vimeo.com/ondemand/linktoyourvideo

It will ask for your password to log in, enter it. Your download should begin.

An update from 2024

I would like to point out a few minor details.

You must have a Vimeo account, do not sign in via Google or anything else,yt-dlp asks for your email address and password to log in.

You must install the yt-dlp via the command below (for MacOS): brew install yt-dlp

and then, when the installation is completed, you must use the command below to download the video: yt-dlp -u [email protected] https://vimeo.com/ondemand/linktoyourvideo

It will ask for your password to log in, enter it. Your download should begin.

Thank you!

thanks @ayyucedemirbas! updated the guide with your approach