How to downlaod video's from MIT

MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is a large-scale, Web-based publishing initiative with the goal of providing free, searchable access to MIT course materials for educators, students, and individual learners around the world. These materials are offered in a single, searchable structure spanning all of MIT's academic disciplines, and include uniform metadata about the contents of the individual subject sites.

How to download MIT OCW streaming video lectures to my computer for viewing off-line?
Most of the video that MIT OCW provides is in a Real Video format delivered through streaming servers. MIT OCW goal in providing video in this format (in multiple bitrates) is to enable users with a variety of Internet connections to sample MIT OCW video offerings with a common browser plug-in without having to download large media files.

MIT OCW video streams can be recorded by video stream recorders supporting Real Video streamed through RTSP protocol like RM recorders, but users are able to download MIT OCW non streaming video files if they prefer to play these files off-line. There are two typical URL structures for links to MIT OCW video lecture delivered in a streaming format:

• OCW video files stored on the Akamai network will have URLs that look something like this

  http://mfile.akamai.com/7870/rm/mitstorage.download.akamai.com/7870/18/18.06/videolectures/strang-1806-lec01-26aug1999-220k.rm

  If you want to download this file and play it off-line, use the following URL -- the only difference is in the first part of the URL:

  http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/18/18.06/videolectures/strang-1806-lec01-26aug1999-220k.rm

• This same basic approach will work for all of the MIT OCW streaming videos stored on the Akamai network. Simply find the URL to the streaming media, and replace the first part of the URL

  http://mfile.akamai.com/7870/rm/mitstorage.download.akamai.com/7870

  with

  http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870

  OCW video files stored on the Internet Archive (such as those for "Course 18.03 -- Differential Equations, Spring 2004") will have URLs that look something like this:

  http://www.archive.org/stream/mitocw.18.03.f03.videolectures/mit-ocw-18.03-lec1-05feb2003-220k.rm

  To download this file and play it off-line, use the following URL -- the only difference is that you replace "stream" with "download":

  http://www.archive.org/download/mitocw.18.03.f03.videolectures/mit-ocw-18.03-lec1-05feb2003-220k.rm

This same basic approach will work for all the MIT OCW streaming videos stored on the Internet Archive network. Simply find the URL to the streaming media file and replace the word "stream" with the word "download."

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS