zoom-downloader 1.0.0

Zoom recording downloader

ZoomDL

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ANNOUNCEMENT LOOKING FOR TESTERS

More and more, I face the challenge of testing. I code on my own Debian machine, and use a Windows 10 VM to compile the executable. But testing has become more and more a challenge, especially for new features.

If you are anyhow interested in helping (there are various ways to!), go to the dedicated issue (#32), and comment there. The concept is still very young for me, sorry that.

• ZoomDL
  • Support
  • ANNOUNCEMENT LOOKING FOR TESTERS
  • Goal
  • Availability
  • Installation
    • Linux/OSX
    • Windows
  • Usage
    • Cookies / SSO / Captcha / Login
    • About syntax
    • About quotes [IMPORTANT]
    • Validity of urls
  • Building from sources
    • Linux
    • Windows
  • Requirements
  • Acknowledgements

Goal

Conferences, meetings and presentations held on Zoom are often recorded and stored in the cloud, for a finite amount of time. The host can chose to make them available to download, but it is not mandatory.

Nonetheless, I believe if you can view it, you can download it. This script makes it easy to download any video stored on the Zoom Cloud. You just need to provide a valid zoom record URL, and optionally a filename, and it will download the file.

Availability

The script was developed and tested under GNU/Linux (precisely, Debian 10). Thus, it should work for about any GNU/Linux distro out there, with common settings. You basically only need Python3 in your path.

New from 2020.06.09 There now exists an executable file zoomdl.exe for Windows. It was kinda tested under Windows 10. Because I never coded under Windows, I have very few tests, mostly empirical ones. Expect bugs! If you encounter a Windows-specific error, don't expect much support. If the error is related to the general logic of the program, report it and I'll do my best to fix it.

Installation

First, install python > 3.7. Then, run pip install zoom-downloader. This should work on all operating systems that support python.

Usage

zoomdl [-h] -u/--url 'url' [-f/--fname 'filename'] [-p/--password 'password'] [-c/--count-clips count] [-d/--filename-add-date] [--user-agent 'custom_user_agent'] [--save-chat (txt|srt)] [--chat-subtitle-dur number] [--save-transcript (txt|srt)] [--dump-pagemeta]

• -u/--url is mandatory, it represents the URL of the video
• -f/--fname is optional, it is the name of the resulting file without extension. If nothing is provided, the default name given by Zoom will be used. Extension (.mp4, .mkv,... is automatic)
• -p/--password is too optional. Set it when your video has a password.
• -c/--count-clips: Sometimes, one URL can contain multiple clips. This tunes the number of clips that will be downloaded. Recordings with multiple clips seem to be quite rare, but do exist. The parameter count works as follow:
  • 0 means: download all of them (starting from the current clip)
  • 1 means: download only the first/given clip
  • > 1 means: download until you reach this number of clip (or the end)
• -d/--filename-add-date will append the date of the recording to the filename. without effect if -f is specified
• --user-agent (no shorthand notation): lets you specify a custom User-Agent (only do that if you know what you're doing and why)
• --cookies (no shorthand notation): specify the path to a cookie jar file.
• --save-chat (no shorthand notation): save chat messages in the meeting to either a plain-text file or .srt subtitle file. Known issue for this function: #70
• --chat-subtitle-dur (no shorthand notation): set the duration in seconds that a chat message subtitle appears on the screen. The default value is 3 (seconds). Only works when you specify --save-chat srt.
• --save-transcript (no shorthand notation): save audio transcripts in the meeting to either a plain-text file or .srt subtitle file.
• --dump-pagemeta (no shorthand notation): dump the page's meta data to a json file for further usages. Usually you do not need this.

Cookies / SSO / Captcha / Login

Some videos are protected with more than a password. You require an SSO, or to solve a captcha. The cookies option allows you to perform all the steps in a browser, and then use the cookies to access the video. This functionality is similar to Youtube-dl's same option.

Howto:

1. (Only once, the first time) In your favourite browser (works for Firefox-based or Chrome-based), install a cookies-export extension. Cookies must some in the Netscape format. There are multiple extensions out there, chose your favourite. For example Firefox, Other Firefox, Chrome, Other Chrome
2. With the same browser, visit the video you want to download; pass all required verifications (SSO, captcha, login,...), until you are able to view the video
3. Using the aformentioned extension, export your cookies. You need the cookies for the domain (.zoom.us), so export at least "cookies for this site", or "cookies for this domain", or whatever it's called.
4. Save generated file somewhere (for example, Downloads/cookies.txt)
5. When calling ZoomDL, use the option --cookies path/to/the/cookies.txt

If you want to download several videos who use the same login (like SSO), you only need to export the cookies once

About syntax

I see a lot of people who don't understand what the above means. Here is a short explanation:

• This is a command, with multiple possible parameters.
• Parameters usually have a short version (with one dash, like -u) and an equivalent long version (with two dashes, like --url); the short and long version are shown separated by a /; you must only use one of them.
• The parameters between square brackets are optional (like -f, that allows you to input a custom filename). The others (for the moment, only -u) are mandatory.
• The order of parameters don't matter
• the -h parameter only displays a short help and commands explanation

For example, those are all valid commands (ofc by replacing the URLs):

zoomdl -u 'https://my_url' -f "recording_from_monday"
zoomdl --url 'https://my_url'
zoomdl -p '$28fn2f8' --filename-add-date --filename "recording_from_tuesday" -u 'https://my_url' --user-agent "Windows 10 wonderful User-Agent" -v 3

About quotes [IMPORTANT]

The quotes are not mandatory, but if your filename/url/password/... contains reserved characters (\, &, $,%...), quotes are the way to go.

Under Linux/OSX, it is strongly advised to use single quotes, because "4$g3.2" will replace $g3 by nothing, while '4$g3.2' will leave the string as-is.

Under Windows, I think you must use double quotes everywhere. Don't quote me on that.

Validity of urls

There are 3 type of valid urls.

• Those starting with https://zoom.us/rec/play/...
• Or, with a domain, https://X.zoom.us/rec/play/... where X is a domain, something like us02web, epfl,... or similar.
• Finally, governemantal urls: https://X.zoomgov.com/rec/play/... (same as above; X may be empty)

Building from sources

If you wish to build from sources, here is a quick howto. First, you need to clone the repository and enter it with a terminal. Then:

Linux

Run the command ./devscript.sh compile. It basically installs all the dependencies with pip in a temporary directory, then zips it.

Windows

• Install pyinstaller (usually pip install -U pyinstaller)
• Run the command wincompile.bat. It calls just calls pyinstaller and cleans the generated folders and files, leaving only the exe file.

Requirements

All dependencies are bundled within the executable. This allows to make a standalone execution without need for external libraries.

If you wish to build it yourself, see requirements.txt. The most important requirement is requests. Please see acknowledgements for a note on that.

Acknowledgements

The folder executable contains requests (and its dependencies), an awesome wrapper for HTTP(s) calls. Please check them out!