Tech question

[+ José Soplanucas]

Is there a way to download videoclips and GIFs from Twitter to your Hard Disk?

[+ oldNbusted]

Is there a way to download videoclips and GIFs from Twitter to your Hard Disk?

 

Yes.

[+ José Soplanucas]

Yes.

 

I hate you.

May someone give me the directions on how to download a GIF file from Twitter to my HD?

[+ oldNbusted]

Bwaaa haa haaa, I wish I could get away with that response at work, so many opportunities.

 

First let me implore you never , ever, pay for any software that claims to do this. I have no idea if any such software will actually work or not, but I am deeply suspicious and almost all of it seems seriously sketchy, I think it's mostly a malware delivery system.

 

Anyway, most of the time, for static images, you can option (or right) click and a contextual menu will give you the option to save the image file. I've never tried to save an animated .gif from Twitter before, and it turns out, what I'm seeing is that it's not actually sending a .gif file, it's an .mp4 video file.

 

I usually use Safari on macOS, which has a "Develop" menu option at Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Show Develop menu in menu bar.

 

As it turns out, Firefox has a similar menu at Firefox > Tools > Web Developer > Inspector.

 

So if we look at

 

https://twitter.com/bttmjockboi/status/945894578686586880

 

you get a 'poster' image for the .mp4, which has the play icon on it. The actual .mp4 won't be loaded until you click on the poster image. If you use the "Network" tab in the Inspector, you can sort by the "Kind" column and manually find the .mp4 file that gets loaded after you click, in this case it's

 

https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/DSB-GfmVQAAgmfY.mp4

 

Now, having said that, I'm too lazy to scrub the list of resources for every page I want to save from, when other people have solved this problem. Since I'm on a Mac, I install MacPorts ( https://www.macports.org ) , which requires Xcode from Apple, and then install a command line tool named youtube-dl, which will scrape video from YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and a lot more. I know it's a few steps to set up, but then it's easy to use in macOS Terminal.app. In the example above, I would just enter the command and the page URL and the tool would figure out the file to download.

 

youtube-dl https://twitter.com/bttmjockboi/status/945894578686586880

 

Edit to say that if this thread follows the standard course, a newbie will pop up shortly extolling the virtues of some paid software for doing this....

Edited December 30, 2017 by oldNbusted

[+ José Soplanucas]

Bwaaa haa haaa, I wish I could get away with that response at work, so many opportunities.

 

First let me implore you never , ever, pay for any software that claims to do this. I have no idea if any such software will actually work or not, but I am deeply suspicious and almost all of it seems seriously sketchy, I think it's mostly a malware delivery system.

 

Anyway, most of the time, for static images, you can option (or right) click and a contextual menu will give you the option to save the image file. I've never tried to save an animated .gif from Twitter before, and it turns out, what I'm seeing is that it's not actually sending a .gif file, it's an .mp4 video file.

 

I usually use Safari on macOS, which has a "Develop" menu option at Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Show Develop menu in menu bar.

 

As it turns out, Firefox has a similar menu at Firefox > Tools > Web Developer > Inspector.

 

So if we look at

 

https://twitter.com/bttmjockboi/status/945894578686586880

 

you get a 'poster' image for the .mp4, which has the play icon on it. The actual .mp4 won't be loaded until you click on the poster image. If you use the "Network" tab in the Inspector, you can sort by the "Kind" column and manually find the .mp4 file that gets loaded after you click, in this case it's

 

https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/DSB-GfmVQAAgmfY.mp4

 

Now, having said that, I'm too lazy to scrub the list of resources for every page I want to save from, when other people have solved this problem. Since I'm on a Mac, I install MacPorts ( https://www.macports.org ) , which requires Xcode from Apple, and then install a command line tool named youtube-dl, which will scrape video from YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and a lot more. I know it's a few steps to set up, but then it's easy to use in macOS Terminal.app. In the example above, I would just enter the command and the page URL and the tool would figure out the file to download.

 

youtube-dl https://twitter.com/bttmjockboi/status/945894578686586880

 

Edit to say that if this thread follows the standard course, a newbie will pop up shortly extolling the virtues of some paid software for doing this....

 

Thank you for the effort, but all that stuff is over my poor little stone brain.

[+ oldNbusted]

Thank you for the effort, but all that stuff is over my poor little stone brain.

 

I used to use browser plugins that made this stuff easier, but since I discovered youtube-dl, I stopped using the plugins, perhaps someone else can speak to the current state of those...

[+ José Soplanucas]

I used to use browser plugins that made this stuff easier, but since I discovered youtube-dl, I stopped using the plugins, perhaps someone else can speak to the current state of those...

 

I do not even know what you are talking about. What is youtube-dl?

[+ oldNbusted]

I do not even know what you are talking about. What is youtube-dl?

 

youtube-dl is the command line tool I was talking about in my post above. One of the reasons i got frustrated with the browser plugins was how often they would break as the various websites would change their code to obscure the files I wanted. Then there would be a delay waiting for a new version.

 

Not that that doesn't happen with the command line tool too, but it seems to get updated so quickly, when I find it's no longer working, it's because I haven't updated it, so as soon as I do, the new versions works against whatever site again.

[+ José Soplanucas]

youtube-dl is the command line tool I was talking about in my post above. One of the reasons i got frustrated with the browser plugins was how often they would break as the various websites would change their code to obscure the files I wanted. Then there would be a delay waiting for a new version.

 

Not that that doesn't happen with the command line tool too, but it seems to get updated so quickly, when I find it's no longer working, it's because I haven't updated it, so as soon as I do, the new versions works against whatever site again.

 

I do not even know what is a command line tool. I can guess, but it is the first time I hear that name.

You are forgetting I am completely illiterate in coding, and just an average struggling user of technology.

Edited December 31, 2017 by latbear4blk

[+ oldNbusted]

I do not even know what is a command line tool. I can guess, but it is the first time I hear that name.

You are forgetting I am completely illiterate in coding, and just am average struggling user of technology.

 

 

I understand, I wouldn't attempt to say it was easy, my perspective is too skewed by decades of experience. After all, when I started using personal computers, no one had to specify the command line user interface because that was practically the only user interface.

Edited December 31, 2017 by oldNbusted

[big-n-tall]

You could try the add-on for google chrome called Flash Video Downloader. Once installed a small downward facing arrow will appear on the nav bar of your browser. It will be grayed out, but once you go onto a page with with downloadable video it will become blue.

 

There are a ton of others... some free, some not. Just search video downloader add-on or plug-in for your preferred browser.

[samhexum]