Connie wants to know how to save video from Facebook. She writes: “I am not a big user of Facebook but from time to time see some cute videos on there. Some I would have liked to keep to my hard drive but the good old “right click” don’t work. I finally figured it out by going to Google and YouTube. You might want to put up a article on this topic sometime for other dummies like me.”
I’m of two minds about this. Because in many cases this is stealing. The video belongs to the person or organization who posted it and it’s not yours to download unless you get permission from that person or group.
The video belongs to them and you need to visit their page to view it. You wouldn’t pick up someone’s home movies in their house and walk out with them without asking permission. There may be some cases where saving a video is necessary. Maybe someone gives you permission to make your own copy of a family video to share with a friend who doesn’t have Facebook or someone is harassing you with videos on Facebook and you want a copy to show to law enforcement before it’s deleted. Or you want a copy of one of those fun little movies that Facebook does to show your year in posts.
But please, don’t make copies of your friend’s personal videos that they’ve shared just with their friends without their permission.
And remember that many folks who post fun videos make their living from those videos. The views that are tallied on YouTube or Facebook directly affects their income. Downloading the videos for yourself, keeps them from getting credit for plays.
That being said, if there’s a time that you need to download a video from Facebook, here’s how to do it.
First, you’ll need to use Google Chrome as your browser. Go to Facebook and find the embedded video that you wish to save.
Play the video. Make sure you don’t take any other actions on Facebook after that.
Go to the address bar and type in Chrome://view-http-cache or just copy and paste it. Then press enter.
You’ll see a long list of addresses. The one at the very top of the list is the last thing you did on FB and the one that you want. Click on it.
The video’s address should now appear in the Chrome address bar.
You’ll want to highlight the Chrome://view-http-cache/ portion of the address and hit Delete, then hit Enter.
The video should appear. You can then right-click and choose Save as.
You can then select a location and change the name of the video to something that makes it easier to find.
~ Cynthia
This did not work for me when I tried it on a video of my grandson that my son had posted on facebook. Can you think of any reason why this did not work? I am using Chrome Version 48.0.2564.116 m (64-bit) on a win 7 laptop.
Thanks,
John
If someone doesn’t want you to copy their video there are things they can do. On YouTube they can copy protect the video so it cannot be downloaded without permission. On Facebook the video can be shared only with a list of people or “friends” that way only they see it but if they try to share it the message “Attachment Unavailable” is displayed. The best defense is a good offence so if you don’t want people downloading your video, DON’T SHARE IT ON FACEBOOK! You can use Dropbox and email the person you want to share the video with a secure link to it. Be sure and tell them not to make a copy and upload it to social media.
Very good advice!