Introduction

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on how to efficiently download read-only Microsoft Teams and Stream videos and recordings using FFMPEG. In the ever-evolving digital landscape, collaborative platforms like Microsoft Teams and Stream have become integral tools for remote work, education, and communication. While these platforms offer a seamless way to share and access multimedia content, they often impose restrictions on downloading content for offline use or further editing.

In this article, we will walk you through the process of leveraging FFMPEG, a powerful multimedia framework, to overcome these limitations. Whether you're an educator looking to save important lectures, a professional archiving important meetings, or simply an enthusiast who wants to access content on the go, our guide will equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to unlock the full potential of your Microsoft Teams and Stream video assets.

By the end of this guide, you'll have the skills and confidence to effortlessly download, manipulate, and make the most of your read-only video resources. Let's dive in and empower you to take control of your multimedia content.

Download FFMPEG

First, you will need to download the FFMPEG binaries, these will be used to download the video that we need from Stream / Teams. Most of the binaries can be located here:

https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

You will need to download and extract the binaries that are correct for your distribution type. As we are using Windows we are using the binaries titled "ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip". The different packages available for download from the FFMPEG website follow the same directory/file structure.

Once you have downloaded the relevant package you will need to extract them using your chosen archive software.

Inspect the Microsoft Teams Video Page

In order to get a download URL you need to inspect the video page where the Microsoft Teams / Stream video recording is available to view.

In this example, I am using Google Chrome as this provides good development tools that allow us to obtain the source URL which we will download from using FFMPEG.

1) First, go to the video's URL using Google Chrome. Now you can view the video but you have no option to download the video.

2) Open developer tools in the browser and go to the Network tab (Right Click > Inspect Element).

3) With developer tools now open refresh the video page. This allows loaded resources to be re-captured by developer tools.

4) In the network tab, search the following command using the search area:

videomanifest?provider

5) Click on the highlighted area and you can see the right panel is viewing some contents.

6) Scroll up to the top of this panel.

7) Now you can find the URL under Request URL, this is the key URL that we need to download the Teams / Stream video content.

8) Copy the entire URL as this is the video source that we will download from.

Download Video Using FFMPEG

Now that we have the URL that we need to process using FFMPEG we need to open either Command Prompt or Terminal depending on which OS you are using and change the directory to wherever you extracted the FFMPEG files. For example:

cd C:\Users\Admin\Downloads\ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl\bin\

Inside of this directory should have the FFMPEG binary. To confirm run the following:

dir

or (depending on OS):

ls

You should see ffmpeg.exe or ffmpeg depending on whichever OS you are using. Now we can run the following to download the video from the URL we obtained in the previous steps:

ffmpeg -i "URL_TO_DOWNLOAD" -codec copy VIDEO_FILE.mp4

Change "URL_TO_DOWNLOAD" with the URL we obtained previously and "VIDEO_FILE.mp4" to whatever you wish for the video to be called. Leave URL in quotes.

The video should begin to download and be placed inside the same directory as ffmpeg. In this example, the video would be saved here:

C:\Users\Admin\Downloads\ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl\bin\NAME

We hope this helps you overcome the limitations within Stream / Teams as far as downloading read-only and expiring content is concerned. We hope this helps you overcome the limitations within Stream / Teams as far as downloading read-only and expiring content is concerned. Using this method we have been able to download plenty of quality content which would have otherwise been lost.

For other useful blog posts and guides please checkout our KB index here.