The vocal talent is Jesse Fisher.

But that’s not the point of this post. This post is about how I got his video to show a few folks where Vimeo is blocked.

On the Vimeo page for the video above, Jesse points folks back to Kadence.tv to download the video. However, it is not there. So I began to research how to download videos from Vimeo.

On a side note, I seriously heart Vimeo.I love how they welcome me home when I stop by.

I think Vimeo has the most polished video sharing site without much of the drivel found at other sites. And yes, I know that it is possible to make a video available for download. Ethical discussions aside, here’s how I saved this video for offline viewing. Of course, I wouldn’t sell it or make a profit in any way, I simply wanted to view it offline.

Enter Vimeo Downloader script.

Through a quick search on the Google I found this script, which allows one to download Vimeo videos. I am not certain if this is the easiest way, but I tried Zamzar to no avail, and this worked. Here are the steps for making this work on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I am not sure how well it works on Windows.

1. Download the script to the Desktop.

2. Open a terminal window and enter this command: chmod u+x ~/Desktop/vimeo_downloader.sh

3. Run the following command: ~/Desktop/vimeo_downloader.sh VIDEOID

(Replace VIDEOID with the numeric code from a video URL. For example if the URL is http://www.vimeo.com/6674062 you would replace VIDEOID with 6674062).

4. Look for the downloaded video to be named VIDEOID.flv on your Desktop.

UPDATE: The author of the original post mentions this in the comments that I thought worth mentioning here:

For an easier method, try the Free Youtube user script, which places a Download link under each video (supports YouTube, Vimeo, blip.tv, and more):

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/34765

To use it with Firefox, first install the Greasemonkey extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

The trouble is that user script totally changes how flash videos function in your browser. So yes, it does work to allow one to download a video, but it makes the user experience quite different. I will leave the script installed, but disabled. I’ll enable it as needed.

Interestingly, when I downloaded the file from Vimeo using the shell script, it downloaded as an .flv whereas using this Greasemonkey script it downloads as .mp4.

Update 2 (updated on November 14, 2010): The script author contacted me with an update. Here is the new link to Vimeo Downloader Script. I have also changed the links in the post.