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Last active January 28, 2026 18:49
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Download Wistia videos - Please do not misuse it!
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Wistia-download-videos.md

Download Wistia videos

  1. right-click on the playing video, select Copy link
  2. find Wistia video ID in the copied link e.g. wvideo=tra6gsm6rl
    • alternative: look for e.g. hashedId=tra6gsm6rl in the page source
  3. load http://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/ + video ID in your browser
  4. look for "type":"original" in the page source and copy the URL from the next line e.g. "url":"http://embed.wistia.com/deliveries/129720d1762175bcd8e06dcab926ec76ad38ff00.bin"
    • alternative: look for "type":"hd_mp4_video"
  5. download the video from the URL with .mp4 extension instead of .bin
@berroz1
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berroz1 commented Nov 24, 2025 •
edited
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@mbagattini Particular to thinkific, I have fixed it. Wistia has recently restricted private video downloads and it depends on the wisitia admin to keep videos private or public.

In order to download private videos:

  • you need to find the iframe source (platform specific)
  • get the account id and jwt token
  • generate the playlist URL
  • multi threaded download (all ts files) and then merge all segments with ffmpeg
  1. Obtain the Video Player HTML

Protected Wistia videos are embedded in an HTML iframe that contains the necessary authorization tokens.

This endpoint returns an HTML page with the embedded Wistia player and is platform specific.

  1. Extract Video ID and JWT Token

From the HTML response, extract:

a) Wistia Video ID: Find the jsonp URL containing the video ID.

Regex Pattern:

'/medias\/(\w+)\.jsonp/'

b) JWT Authorization Token:

options.authorization = {
    jwt: 'eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...'
}

Regex Pattern:

/jwt:\s*['\"]([^'\"]+)['\"]/s

Note: The JWT token may span multiple lines in the HTML. Remove all whitespace/newlines after extraction.

  1. Get Video Metadata

Query the Wistia API to get video metadata:

GET https://fast.wistia.com/embed/medias/{video_id}.json

Response includes:

  • protected: Boolean indicating if video is protected
  • accountId: Required for constructing protected URLs
  • assets: Array of video qualities and formats
  1. Construct Protected M3U8 URL

For protected videos, construct the HLS playlist URL:

https://fast-protected.wistia.com/embed/accounts/{account_id}/medias/{video_id}.m3u8?quality_min=360&quality_max=2160&pma={jwt_token}

Parameters:

  • account_id: From metadata response
  • video_id: Wistia video ID
  • pma: JWT token (URL-encoded if necessary)

Note:

  • Wistia JWT tokens are very much time limited.
  • Playlist JWT is valid for 24h

Hi Sumeet, thanks so much for the information!

Is this restriction by Wistia only applicable to Thinkific? Or can admins make any embedded videos private?

Upon checking my Wistia account, the only relevant option I see is to make a video password-protected, so the video can only be watched upon entering the password. Not sure if that's what you refer to as private?

@sumeetweb
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sumeetweb commented Nov 24, 2025

Hi @berroz1 Wistia admins can make any video private. It is independent of platform. Thinkfic type platforms just use the embed code to show to end users.

@guineapirates
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guineapirates commented Jan 5, 2026

HI guys! I created a Chrome extension that does just that in a click of a button: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/fhmlmcbfjnegdoafmfcfmhpahfegdjlp?authuser=1&hl=en

I'd really appreciate it if you can give me your feedback after trying it. Any bugs, anything I can improve on it?

Perfect thank you so much!

@deadcoder0904
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deadcoder0904 commented Jan 28, 2026

@berroz1 Thank you that worked. One thing I'd like is if it worked for video #3 & #6 here: https://www.shipyard.fyi/ (specifically Quin Gable & Rebecca Louise)... the rest worked.

@berroz1
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berroz1 commented Jan 28, 2026

@berroz1 Thank you that worked. One thing I'd like is if it worked for video #3 & #6 here: https://www.shipyard.fyi/ (specifically Quin Gable & Rebecca Louise)... the rest worked.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad the extension works for you! Regarding that website, the problem seems that the videos are loaded in a popup overlay and so aren't detected. I'll see what I can do about that.

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