Just found a nice website that analyzes the video path and so we could download the videos that are on bilibili.com! As of today when I post this, the webpage ibilibili.com is still alive.
03/12/2017: Some people are wondering about downloading the popup comments in bilibili. Note that ibilibili.com should give you that as well (so Method 1 should be enough). If something is wrong, you can go on and read Method 2, assuming it's alive.
06/05/2017: Something to note. Member-only videos (non public videos) cannot be downloaded right now. Keyword test: 다운로드, 下载, 下載, ダウンロード, descargar, скачать, ดาวน์โหลด
The Ultimate Solution
Hi all, I have been looking for a reliable solution for so long. I've been searching since 2015, and it never really gives a reliable solution. After struggling for a while, here I give you the ultimate solution to run on your PC. Using it as a web service is possible, but it'll be too costly to maintain. Given my financial condition I cannot afford that.
Anyway, the essential steps are simple. As some people are confused about the procedure, let me make this clearer. Don't give up on trying! (08/12/2017)
- Install Python 3 and reboot your computer
- Download from https://www.python.org/downloads/
- For MacOS/Linux users, just reboot
- For Windows users, remember to check "Add python.exe to Path" before you install, something like shown below
- If you use Linux or Mac OS, open up a terminal
- If you use Windows, open up the command window as Administrator
- Download the video by:
you-get [Bilibili link]
For more installation guidelines, please visit here.
For example:
# to look for video information
you-get -di http://www.bilibili.com/video/av854324/
# if the link contains multiple videos, use ?p=xx for individual video
you-get -di http://www.bilibili.com/video/av854324/?p=65
The output looks like
site: Bilibili
title: 古风恒久远，良曲永流传【古风合集】
streams: # Available quality and codecs
[ DEFAULT ] _________________________________
- format: flv
container: flv
size: 18.9 MiB (19853917 bytes)
# download-with: you-get --format=flv [URL]
- format: hdmp4
container: mp4
size: 18.7 MiB (19559025 bytes)
# download-with: you-get --format=hdmp4 [URL]
- format: mp4
container: mp4
size: 15.1 MiB (15827299 bytes)
# download-with: you-get --format=mp4 [URL]
So if you want to download mp4, then run
you-get --format=mp4 http://www.bilibili.com/video/av854324/index_65.html
And a real example from Hiki:
Q & A & Trouble Shooting
Q1: Where did I download my file?
The downloaded video will be located at whichever folder you run you-get. Below is a brief example how to browse folders in terminal.
For Windows: (anything after # means comments)
C:\WINDOWS\System32\> dir # list files in current folder
C:\WINDOWS\System32\> D: # change to D disk
D:\> cd xxx_folder_name # change to xxx_folder_name
D:\xxx_folder_name\> cd .. # change back to upper folder
D:\> you-get http://xxxxx
For MacOS (or Linux):
~$ ls # list files in current folder
~$ cd xxx_folder_name # change to xxx_folder_name
~$ cd .. # change back to upper folder
~$ pwd # know current folder path
~$ you-get http://xxxxx
Q2: I'm getting UTF-8 locale issues.
you-get: [error] oops, the current environment does not seem to support Unicode.
you-get: please set it to a UTF-8-aware locale first,
you-get: so as to save the video (with some Unicode characters) correctly.
you-get: you can do it like this:
you-get: (Windows) % chcp 65001
you-get: (Linux) $ LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
Kyo posted this. What you need to do is to run the following as soon as you open the terminal:
Q3: Why there is error downloading through a link?
Recently Bilibili has taken down most of its videos due to pirating issues.
01/15/2018: If you have encountered 403 or 466 error, use the following as a temporary solution:
pip3 install --upgrade https://github.com/ygmpkk/you-get/archive/develop.zip
To convert back later when the merge is approved, go back to the original version via:
pip3 install --upgrade https://github.com/soimort/you-get/archive/master.zip
Note: if you find issues downloading the video, try to update you-get using the following command:
pip3 install --upgrade https://github.com/rosynirvana/you-get/archive/master.zip
Also, this method support many other services like Youku, YouTube, Daily Motion, etc. All supported sites are listed here.
Let me know if you get any questions.
The New Method: BilibiliJJ (06/28/2017)
Another one! While I'm still working on it, here is another one you can try. Like iBilibili, you can add JJ after bilibili and get the download links (warning: many ads, but please don't use Adblocker to support the developer).
For example, if you go to a video page like
http://www.bilibili.com/video/av2555634/
You can just add "jj" after "bilibili" like
http://www.bilibilijj.com/video/av2555634/
Then you will see "MP4/MP3下载" for each video (if there are parts, they are in separate blocks). Just click on those, you will be redirected to a page with the downloading link.
Then it is a tricky part. For example you get to the page
http://www.jijidown.com/FreeDown/3992726.php
Then you need to right click the first blue button that says "迅雷下载". Then you will get a link like:
thunder://QUFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lmppamlkb3duLmNvbS9GcmVlRG93bi9Eb3duTG9hZC8xNDk4NzE1OTk2L21wNC8zOTkyNzI2LjY5NkJEOTRBMzEzNTBCMkMxNDVFNjUwNzAwQ0VBOUExWlo=
Use this site to translate that link to a normal url, like shown below:
The first is the Thunder link, and the second is the real link. So the actual video download link would be:
http://www.jijidown.com/FreeDown/DownLoad/1498715996/mp4/3992726.696BD94A31350B2C145E650700CEA9A1
Hope this works for many of you. Let me know.
Method 0: DPlayer's API
06/15/2017: these services are never so stable... Hiki mentioned 403 permission error occurs. Maybe it's time to start my own parser. As of 06/28/2017, we still get 403 errors.
Great news, guys! I find this API link for analyzing bilibli video links and we can definitely use it for video downloading (just like BH-5). It's not as simple as putting an "i" in front of the link, but since iBilibili now requires you to register and login and then download, I believe we should name this method "ZERO" for its current up status.
Ready?
If you want to get the video to download in
http://www.ibilibili.com/video/av10673439/
Then just use the link
https://api.prprpr.me/dplayer/video/bilibili?aid=10673439
For the popup comments (I learned from there that it should be called "DanMuKu"), use the link
https://api.prprpr.me/dplayer/bilibili?aid=10673439
The only issue is I have not figured out how to find the CID of each video, so we cannot download multiple videos in one link right now. But, hey, this is a great start!
Method 1 (simplest): iBilibili
05/16/2017: iBilibili has requested all visitors to register a QQ account and sign in to prevent content leakage to other sites. This is bad because the method is getting more complicated, if you don't have QQ already.. I believe you can go here to register it (in English, thank god...).
The trick is simple. When you go to a video page like
http://www.bilibili.com/video/av2555634/
You can just add "i" before "bilibili" like
http://www.ibilibili.com/video/av2555634/
That is it!
Detailed Instruction for iBilibili (04/22/2016)
Kinda surprised many people love bilibili. In comments people are a little confused on how to download the video. Below is a brief tutorial.
Say you have visited http://www.ibilibili.com/video/av2555634/ and want to download the video. If there are multiple videos embedded/posted, then it'll show multiple links. For example,
Each row is one video, from left to right these are "click to watch the video", "parse low quality mp4", "download video (video size)", "MP3 download (mp3 size)" (disabled I think), "show QR code to download", "download popup comments".
If there is only one video, it might show the following instead.
From left to right these are "mobile video" (mp4 format), "mobile QR code", "HD video" (flv format, might be broken), "popup comments", "screenshot", and "parse via JiJi" (seems broken and only ads are showing).
Method 2: Bilibili Helper (05/29/2017, segmented video downloader)
So if you are using Chrome, I just find an extension to help download Bilibili videos (segmented videos only). You can click here to install the extension.
I have tried it and certainly this is so far (05/29) THE best alternative to iBilibili. After you install the extension, it'll pop up and ask you to agree to use the helper (green button). There are plenty functionalities, and by default the downloader is enabled. You might need to restart Chrome browser to allow it to work.
To test it, simply go to any bilibili video, and then you will see the following options.
The cat is the helper menu, and from top to bottom they are: video download, popup comment search, popup comment download (XML format or ASS format).
The only downside of this method is that, if you plan to download a movie for example, you will see tens of download links. The movie is segmented into multiple parts and you have to download them piece by piece. But, you know, this is better than nothing (if iBilibili is out of concern).
Method 3: BH-5 (dead as of 06/05/2017)
I have hidden the contents for your benefit. If it is not hidden, it means BH-5 (bilibilih5.club) comes back alive..
NOTE: the webpage now has some parsing issues for different parts. Only the first part can be accessed. Use Method 1 if possible. (11/05/2016) the problem has been fixed as of 11/27/2016, cheers!
NOTE2: as of 12/11/2016, BH-5 is down again.. yes, again.. I guess it has to do with bilibili internal changes on its player. The good news is bilibili is using HTML5 as its player now. Maybe we can do something easier just like BH-5. Stay tuned.
Note3: Great news! I just found BH-5 is coming alive again (as of 02/28/2017)! Yay! I'm a bit tired in this because it keeps going down and up, back and forth. Currently it's down again (05/07/2017, thanks to Hiki). I will mark this as an unstable site. Because of this, I will work on my own site to download bilibili videos (as one of my personal projects in summer).
People were having some issues downloading videos using ibilibili.com. Here I find another nice website that is essentially a html5 version of bilibili. Why that's good? Because you can directly right click on the video and do "Save as..."
The website is http://www.shiroblue.cn/ or http://bilibilih5.club/ (same site, different domain names) (obviously the web owner has permanently switched to the new domain name).
Either you copy the name of the video and search for it, or do the following.
Suppose (@moon) had http://www.bilibili.com/video/av5047810 but it fails on the iBilibili method. Using the last few digits, we convert the link into:
http://bilibilih5.club/#/view/5047810
Now first click the video to play, and wait for the video playing, then right click on the video, we see "Save video as..." is there waiting for you.
It would also work if you replace "http://www.shiroblue.cn/" with "http://bilibilih5.club/".
Sometimes the video stuck after we click it to play, and "Save as" might not work as expected. A solution I can think of is to refresh the page, choose a different source (like "backup:1" if there is one), and then try again. This method has been deprecated since the website player no longer provides "source" option. If this does not work, post link here and I'll try to help you.
03/12/2017 update about "popup comments". In case you wonder about how to download popup comments in BH-5, I can tell you there is a not-so-simple way. BH-5 gives the option to display the comments, which allow us to download the popup comments. But it needs some efforts. Detailed step below.
- Assume you find BH-5 link: http://bilibilih5.club/#/view/9068328 and you are using Chrome browser.
- Turn on the "Developer Tool" in Chrome as shown below:
- Click the "network" tab, and go to the BH-5 link (or refresh the page if you are already there). Then you will see the following xml file (must be some numbers)
- Congratulations, you have found the popup comments!
Method 4: FLVCD or other online video downloader
As many people from the comments suggested, it seems online video downloader is the best option so far. Here are a recommended list coming from the comments. Feel free to comment and add more.
Just be aware there might be ads.
About Downloading Member-Only Videos at Bilibili
Some videos are member-only and currently there are no good ways to bypass that and download them. To view the videos, you have to become a member, answering 20-ish questions correctly. They are all in Chinese so you need to know a bit about the language. You cannot copy the words directly since they are embedded in the image. To answer the questions, if you can type in Chinese/Japanese, you can go to https://www.zhengjie.com/ to find answers as suggested by findaaaiba. Or you could purchase bilibili account through taobao.
Re-Organized again 🙂 (10/30/2016 05/29/2017 07/15/2017)
Re-organized contents. Since BH-5 is dead for now, I moved it to later parts of the article. Also thank "kimo" for providing an alternative method, but it seems vdYoutube.com failed on me.
As the ultimate solution is presented, I will no longer implement my own solution. This solution is on GitHub and is well maintained by many people. If ever the service is down, it can be quickly fixed, either by the developers, or by me. Thank you all for being with me for 2 years. 🙂
I can't believe I'm still updating this post, after 3 years :O (08/30/2018)
Hey there! This is a handy guide indeed, but this particular link
http://www.ibilibili.com/video/av5208221/#
I can't seem to download in HD.
Help me, Obi-Wan; you're my only hope!
Try this one: http://www.shiroblue.cn/#/view/5208221
Click the video to play, and then right click on the video and choose "save as.."
I can't 🙁
can you post the link here? I can take a look
hello! i want to ask something,if this one link bilibili contain many parts of the video,how to download the other part? like this one http://bilibilih5.club/#/view/3895873 it has 2 parts but i cant download the second part ;-;
for the second part, just go ahead choose the second part, then click the video to play it, and pause and right click to download.
You sir,are an amazing help.
hello, PLEASE help me! >.< How do i download this? http://www.bilibili.com/video/av5362128/index_1.html
It should download right? I have no problem here. Just add 'i' in front of bilibili.
or try this link http://bilibilih5.club/#/view/5362128
wow! it works perfectly! Thank you very very much for helping me! and for sharing this tips! ^_____^
Wow thank you so much for this tutorial :D!! Do you know other websites which are similar to this? where it has lots of japanese tv show ; u ; )?
Nope I don't.
Thank you so much for this tutorial! The usual online video downloaders I'm using can't even detect the video on bilibili. Bless you 🙂
thank you for this tips, i can download the video.
but why flv format can't download, i have tried it but i can't download
thank you very much
I believe this free service has some bugs to fix as others have reported similar things. I sent the developer messages already and hopefully he could update them asap. Meanwhile, enjoy other videos on bilibili 🙂
Thank you so much, that works just great :")
hey, thank you for the tutorial. i was having a problem tho. can you check this one for me? http://www.bilibili.com/video/av5047810
when i inserted i into this link, it only showed me 3 download links when the link actually had 5 videos. can you help me? thank you
I think they buffered the links. It might contain only 3 links before, and possibly the guy added two more videos but the parsing webpage doesn't do it in real time. I have contacted the site author and he'll take a look at this.
hey dude, I find another awesome website that is basically a html5 version of bilibili. I'll write a tut soon.
OMG Thank you so much for the tip.
It helps a lot
HI!!!! i have been looking for ways to download videos on billibili with IDM and i am so happy i found your tutorial thank you so much man bless you!
haha, np
I've found when I use this method to download longer videos (50-ish minute tv shows), the file will cut off partway through. Any fix for that? Thanks so much!
And it only tells you there's one video, not multiple ones? If so, it is probably a bug of the program.. You can go to the contact/message board and tell the developer.
sorry i still confused. where i can download the video? i've done to write 'i' . but not works? i must open which website for download video? thanks..
Hi there. When you add 'i' you should be able to get to a webpage (in Chinese) that shows "手机视频" (mobile video, mp4 format) and "高清视频" (HD video, flv format). Just click either one to download the video. And it seems "mobile video" is more robust than HD video parsing.
is there any limit to download using this method? at first, it worked but the next video seems like i need to register/have VIP account..
I don't think so. They don't have such limitations as far as I know (tried 10 videos and all are downloadable). How many you have tried? Maybe try to clear your browser cache and then parse the link.
http://www.bilibili.com/video/av4388661/
what's that? I can download it from ibilibili
Thank U very much it actually worked
Does not work for me TnT
Can you post a link here? I can check for you why it doesn't work.
It is work!!
Absolutely appreciate with you!! XDD
and Thankyou!! o(^▽^)o
Wow... it actually worked! Thanks so much! People seem to upload all the good Japanese TV shows on this website such as Music Station and it doesn't get taken down quickly. However, it's still good to be able to save them. 🙂
Thanks again.
Ha, np. Indeed they have all sorts of shows, movies, music, etc.
any idea how to download this?
http://www.bilibili.com/video/av5047810/index_1.html
Same thing is replied to moon.. I think they buffered the links. It might contain only 3 links before, and possibly the guy added two more videos but the parsing webpage doesn't do it in real time. I have contacted the site author and he'll take a look at this.