ghacks Technology News

This is a private video workaround for Youtube

Youtube claims that private videos can only be seen by your account and by those accounts that you shared it with. This is however not true at all, there is an easy way to download private videos from Youtube without any problems at all. Let me first explain how a private video looks like and how you are going to find them.

A private video displays a red message when you open it in Youtube reading “This is a private video. If you have been sent this video, please make sure you accept the sender’s friend request.” Take a look at private video for an example. You can search Google for the phrase “This is a private movie” to find more private movies, some really interesting ones if you ask me..

The trick to download those private movies is simple. We use a cache to access those videos. The general url of the cache is cache.googlevideo.com/get_video?video_id= and all you need to do is to add the video id of the youtube video behind it.

You do get a download prompt afterwards and can download the video to your hard drive. This is probably the only flaw in this method, there is no way to view the video on site. Should not be a big problem though.

Ryan from Cybernet News created a nice bookmarklet that simply prompts for an Youtube id which means that you do not have to copy and paste the cache url all the time. Right-click the bookmarklet and save it to your favorites, then click on it whenever you want to download a private video.

bookmarklet
via: Cybernet News

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.

Author: , Friday August 24, 2007 -
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Responses so far:

  1. jx-3p says:

    doesn’t work anymore. i think it’s because youtube just changed their coding or something. i was really hoping this would work, too. anybody have another way to get around the private vid problem?

  2. jx-3p says:

    correction. it works. for some reason it didn’t work for me at first. might be something to keep an eye on, though.

  3. Carlos says:

    Attention! Youtube I believe youtube’s recent site update must have rendered this cached private video download url link useless. Just about a week ago, I tried to download numerous videos with the cache url link provided and also tried other various youtube video downloading sites claiming to download private videos, but no dice I get the same error. Now I have to wait until someone finds loop hole in youtubes system. Time to do some research. Well it was great while it lasted. Kudos to whoever discovered or made the url link by the way.

  4. aarcher says:

    You are all very pathetic. Obviously, none of you have anything better to do than pry into other people’s private lives.

    • Mark says:

      Wrong. I think I speak for most everyone on here when I say that the point is to access videos that have generally been public (music videos, etc) but were for some reason rendered private after a the given user was apparently satisfied with their number of ratings and subscriptions. For example Moonsoon by Tokio Hotel. No reason whatsoever to render it private after being public for so long. No one here is talking about downloading your grandmother’s private blog sessions. Oh dear me.

      (Replay to Aarcher)

  5. coder says:

    aarcher you idiot, some people looking at this will be developers trying to get around a flaw in the google API.

  6. Patrick says:

    Didn’t work for me.

  7. Rosarch says:

    doesn’t work anymore.

  8. dum444 says:

    I don´t want a privat video because I want to see someones privat things!
    It´s because I´m in the video my freind recorded and he is not showing it to me!

  9. junker says:

    guys … a private video doesn’t necessarily mean that the uploader doesnt want to share a video with you. It’s just a stupid youtube feature which i mostly hate. Let me give you an example: many youtube links that used to work, don’t work anymore cause of that idiotic “private video” thing. And I’m sure that all the uploaders didn’t suddenly make tons of videos private…

  10. J says:

    Google the video id, and try to find the mobile site, or mobile comments and get to the video. It will play on your computer as a 3gp file but I still haven’t found a way to download it. At least you can watch or listen to it but the video is of poor quality.

  11. N says:

    guys, i try to watch a video that is linked to youtube from an other site, and is showing me the message tha the video is private. Is there a way to watch the video?

  12. Jones says:

    This trick is not working for me.

  13. fan fre says:

    it really doesn’t work to me,,,,,,
    I just want ed to watch a movie on youtube,,,
    is there any other way???

  14. Will says:

    im just wondering, if people put their videos on the internet which has an infinite life span how can they expect privacy? Tell me something can there be privacy on the internet?

  15. Osiris Sinclair says:

    aarcher you seem to have missed the point. As a content producer, considering where to host our organizations videos, it’s certainly relevant to know about any potential security holes in the services we are considering.

  16. R. Sanzchow says:

    Any news on this?
    Is Youtube “Private Video” feature still insecure?
    Present recent fact, and many of us will be pleased.

  17. BlackoutWorm says:

    How do I download a private video? This is not working.

  18. jay says:

    this actually worked for me just this week.

    • angel says:

      can you please help me?

      I need to access this video

      its my best friend performing at a show and he needs it or at least to be able to see it.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icz31xkc6qQ&feature=player_embedded

  19. amber says:

    nope didn’t work

  20. luis says:

    just add the word “bajar” behind the word “youtube” and voila, if the chat noices are bothering you, you can close the chat screen. it should look like this
    http://www.bajaryoutube.com/

  21. Not Working.. I tried this
    http://cache.googlevideo.com/get_video?video_id=U9nj5oRpXjQ
    its a youtube video..
    Server not found ..was the result.. plz help

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