Flickr API

have you tried flickr.photo.getsizes?

it will return the original video in the format of:

www.flickr.com/photos/curiouskiwi/3695794427/play/orig/secretnumber/

(I removed the secret in the example)

when I loaded that URL, it gave me a .mov file

I don't know if that will give you what you need, but maybe you can try?

Thanks Brenda. Seems to give me just what I'm after.

Does any one know if there is a way to retrieve the original file extension of the video file, or even full filename. Thanks to Brenda I can now get the URL through code, but when it comes to naming the file for download, the originalformat property is just giving me jpg!

Anthony.

A few notes on this, for posterity's sake.

The download URL Brenda posted wasn't working for me, until I realized the that secret key isn't actually supposed to be the secret key, but the originalsecret key (because we're downloading the original file).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/{user-id|custom-url}/{photo-id}/play/{site|mobile|hd|orig}/{secret|originalsecret}/

More info on this was posted to the flickr code blog:
code.flickr.com/blog/2009/03/02/videos-in-the-flickr-api-...

Also, the correct video file extension isn't returned in any API calls that I know of. But it IS returned in the "Content-Disposition" response header you receive when you request the file from the server.

Has anyone tried this recently? It appears that Flickr may have disabled the ability to obtain the video URLs through the API. I'm making a fully authenticated call to flickr.photo.getsizes, as described above, but it simply gives me back the URL for the video's web page, not the video itself.

Have you tried accessing that URL? I seem to recall it results in an http redirect to the actual file.

So there seems to be a little change to what the API returns.
Run getSizes() API and from a entry labeled 'Site MP4', retrieve the url labeled 'source' not the url labeled 'url'. this will give us link to the video's web page )

I concur with @12fh. It used to be that the "source" attribute of the "Video Original" element of the "getSizes" API call provided a download URL to the original of the uploaded video (actually a redirect to the actual download URL). E.g. ''

However, that URL is now a 404. At least for me.

The "Site MP4" entry that jaeyoung.choi refers to is not the original video.

Have you checked this: the source of the "Original Video" might be a .jpg file. I don't remember exactly right now, but when I was working with video I got back a .jpg URL when I was trying to access the original video URL using getSizes.

I'm getting the same issues here.

When you do photos.getSizes, the url labeled "Video Original" is the only url that doesn't work (returns 404).

it only happens with new uploads (and not always). Old uploads are still downloadable.

any ideas?

maybe a flickr dev response?

I am also running into this issue. It appears that trying to download the original video from www.flickr.com/photos/USER/PHOTO/play/orig/ORIG_SECRET/ does not work for my newer videos that are in MP4 format. Here is some debugging information that may help one of the Flickr developers get this fixed. (Note: I removed the authentication information from the example below.)

GET api.flickr.com:80/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.get...






















All of the other video links work correctly.

Brian

The XML response from the API was filtered from my previous comment. I included it below with parentheses so that it is not filtered.

(?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?)
(rsp stat="ok")
(sizes canblog="1" canprint="1" candownload="1")
(size label="Square" width="75" height="75" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_s.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/sq/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Large Square" width="150" height="150" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_q.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/q/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Thumbnail" width="100" height="75" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_t.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/t/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Small" width="240" height="180" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_m.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/s/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Small 320" width="320" height="240" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_n.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/n/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Medium" width="500" height="375" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/m/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Medium 640" width="640" height="480" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_z.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/z/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Medium 800" width="800" height="600" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_c.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/c/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Large" width="960" height="720" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_SECRET_b.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/l/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Original" width="960" height="720" source="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/7991599695_ORIG_SECRET_o.jpg" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/sizes/o/" media="photo" /)
(size label="Video Player" width="640" height="480" source="https://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=109786&photo_id=7991599695&photo_secret=SECRET" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/" media="video" /)
(size label="Site MP4" width="640" height="480" source="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/play/site/SECRET/" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/" media="video" /)
(size label="Mobile MP4" width="480" height="360" source="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/play/mobile/SECRET/" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/" media="video" /)
(size label="HD MP4" width="960" height="720" source="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/play/hd/SECRET/" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/" media="video" /)
(size label="Video Original" width="1280" height="960" source="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/play/orig/ORIG_SECRET/" url="https://www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991599695/" media="video" /)
(/sizes)
(/rsp)

Brian

I think flickr might have fixed this issue in the last few days. The original videos are now downloadable.

There's a new issue though. The content-disposition header doesn't contain the file extension as it used to.

I am now able to download the original videos through the API, however I also encountered the problem where the file extension is not in the content-disposition header. Here are the response headers that I get when I download this URL:

www.flickr.com/photos/masneyb/7991385723/play/orig/ORIG_S...

Connection: close
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=7991385723_orig.
Content-Length: 24708172
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:13:54 GMT
Server: YahooTrafficServer/3.0.1 (UFF)
Via: HTTP/1.1 YahooTrafficServer/3.0.1 (UFF)
X-Uf-Server: a4edlv02.atlas.cdn.a4e.yimg.com

Brian

I ran into this issue a while back, whilst writing some scripts to backup my flickr collection locally. I ended up without a solution - other than eithe leaving off the extension, or hard-coding it so it was correct most of the time.

I wonder if the original_format returning "jpeg" for video is a bug (as it seems), or if there is reason behind it...

Is there still no way of figuring out the original video's extension?

get links and go to link Video Original - I see error message:

This is not the page you're looking for.
It seems like you're trying to see one of your own photos or videos.
Here are your most recent uploads...

There is still no way of figuring out the original video's extension.
Since - even following the "original video" link - you always get converted media back, you loose extension and all metadata stored in the original video.
This is a shame.

Indeed. I've been struggling with this for years in the context of trying to develop a reasonable backup utility for Flickr. The video_download.gne link (which is what you get when you click on the "Download this video" button) will return the original video, but only in an authenticated session. It redirects to a URL of the form:

live.staticflickr.com/video/{photo_id}/{server_id}/orig.mp4?{unguessable_token}

{unguessable_token} seems to be account-specific rather than session-specific. I was able to obtain it using cliget, and it didn't appear to change, but I'm not sure whether that will remain the case.

Unfortunately, I've found some videos in my gallery where the traditional video URLs (www.flickr.com/photos/{user}/{photo_id}/play/orig/{server_id}) don't even work anymore. Videos are, in general, not treated like first-class citizens on Flickr. You can't replace them, Flickr doesn't read geotagging metadata from them, etc. Suboptimal.