Downloading ALL lds.org videos

[agalbraith]

I am a SS President in a ward where the Library has been blessed with several TVs with media devices capable of playing MP4s from USB. And many members of our ward, sister wards, and stake representative have access to decent laptops that they attempt to use for presentations via projectors or said Library TVs.

I have helped any interested person acquire a small USB drive for free or near free and have provided instructions for how to obtain videos to match their lessons [for the record I have encouraged them to use the 720p or Medium or Standard, or whatever is not the "smallest" and not the "largest" .] Yet, I have noticed that no matter how much I help others help themselves, there is always an opportunity...I daresay a need...probably once a week that if only I had a certain video in MY collection, I could help someone have a great lesson, spiritual thought, presentation. In Sunday lessons, ward socials, stake presentation, even home situations.

So, I have started an endeavor to create two 128+ GB USB "stick" drives with as many "official" LDS videos as I can find (with NO attempt to acquire videos that are not publicly available for download). [the reality is: people are forgetful, technology can be overwhelming and problematic, and because I personally feel inclined to be prepared..]

MY issue is: the effort is great.. And I feel that if I actually get a decent and up to date library, It would be valuable to share in 1 or several massive zips (though technically I think I would use another archiving technology, but uncertain and unimportant until I get the content)

So before I even begin this quest, has someone already done it... Is there a location where I can obtain all (or significant, or most recent, or just a lot of) the videos available for download via lds.org in large compilations [or at worst case a site that list the mp4s so they can be download without going to a special page for each one] Videos like (but not limited to): The New Youth Program [Come Follow Me] (and the teachers supplemental videos), WW leaderships, conferences, Mormon Messages, Bible Videos, classic seminary/institute videos, full feature films (like the old/new missionary dvd/medias, the films made for the theatre in the JS building and classics like Johnny Lingo), videos available in the Mormon Channel, and frankly ANYTHING that could be appropriately shown in a meetinghouse on the Sabbath or appropriate for a spiritual thought LDS oriented video in any setting.

(Note: My intention is to "be that hero, that saves the moment", not for personal reasons, but to be there for members and neighbors when they want to use a spiritual video, but for whatever reason, something goes wrong: with streaming, download corruption, laptop failure, iPad is too small etc. I want to be able to say, "don't worry, give me a couple of minutes and you will be able to show that video like you really wanted and your thought or lesson will not be distracted with 'technology issues'"

Aaron

[gregwanderson]

I, too, have tried to download a lot of videos and make them available for anyone who happens to want them on Sundays. (I am a "Ward Technology Specialist".) The videos reside on flash drives in our meetinghouse library. I've started with the most commonly-used videos, the ones referenced in the youth "Come, Follow Me" lessons. I usually use the highest-available resolutions so, therefor, the "zip" file with all of the videos isn't my first choice (but I'll download it anyway just to make sure I have all of the files).

I often refer to this page as a complete repository of the available videos for all categories. I suppose you've already discovered the page. But I haven't found a faster method of downloading other than selecting each individual file through the links I find through this main directory.

In short, I think I've already done a lot of what you intend to do. It required a lot of clicking on "save as" and then walking away for a while. Now I have a hard drive at home with a large collection of church videos downloaded from LDS.org (from several of the categories and not just the Youth material) but I have no suggestions on how you might achieve what I did in a faster/more efficient way. Because of the terms of use for LDS.org I'm also unable to share my collection with you directly… and I wouldn't have the means to post that much data elsewhere anyway.

[agalbraith]

is there a way to crawl https://www.lds.org/media-library/video?lang=eng to create a list of all mp4 files?

Then I could sick a downloader on a subset of the list (for instance the ones with 720p in their name, or just a manual list created in text editor)

Aaron

[mevans]

Someone in one of the wards in our building downloaded a bunch of the videos and they are available on flash drives in the library. I've posted the list of all the videos we have on our ward newsletter so the teachers can review the list.

This really seems like a great, inexpensive way to get the videos into the hands of the teachers. It would be great if the church formalized and standardized this distribution method with a way to push a video repository to local meetinghouse computers so they can easily be copied to flash drives. The Media Library could be updated with information about what's in the standard distribution to meetinghouses and a catalog number or something so it's easy to find on the flash drive.

I've seen posts from others who have set up media servers in their buildings, which is another solution, but I'm thinking the flash drives require less technology and non-tech-savvy people are going to be more successful with flash drives than trying to connect to a media server.

[kenanderson]

I've actually started writing a python program to crawl and scrape and download all videos on lds.org. I also recently found that the seminary and institute websites already have a lot of videos compressed for each year. Talk to your seminary principal and he/she can help you get those. They have a bunch that aren't on lds.org but they don't have all of the videos on lds.org either.