How to collect the various types of videos found on Facebook
With the release of X1 Social Discovery v7.1, the Facebook Capture scanner now supports Facebook video parsing, previews, and Mp4 downloads, with comment expansion. Video Downloads are enabled by default, and can be toggled off via the Capture Settings in the upper right-hand corner of the external capture browser.
Facebook.com and YouTube* embedded videos posted to a User Timeline, Group Discussion Page, or Public Page Post pages can be captured via a Timeline capture, just like any other post. However, not all Facebook videos are created equally. Here are some helpful tips for downloading the other various types of videos found on Facebook.
*please note that Copyright-restricted videos from YouTube cannot be downloaded at this time.
Facebook Watch Pages
Although video downloads from Facebook Watch pages are not currently supported, there are some very simple tricks to capture the videos and comments found on these types of pages. Complicating this issue, however, is that there are two distinct versions of Facebook Watch pages. For the most prevalent of these versions, clicking on the timestamp of the desired video will navigate you to the Video Post Page, which is supported and will allow you to capture the video in question. Attempting to capture from the Watch page will prompt a Limited Capture Warning to help you find where to click in order to navigate to the capturable page.
For the alternate Watch Page (Watch Live Pages), the workaround is similar, but rather then clicking on the timestamp, users can instead click on either of the "Comment" links to navigate to the Video Post Page (note: attempting to capture from this type of watch page will also prompt a Limited Facebook Capture warning with these same instructions).
Facebook Reels - Timeline Captures
One of the more recent additions to Facebook videos are Facebook Reels. Currently, there are three varieties of Reels videos found on Facebook: Timeline Reels, shared Instagram Reels, and User Stories. X1 Social Discovery v7.1 supports both Timeline Reels and Instagram Reels video capture; but, unfortunately, Facebook Stories are not presently supported. Reels posted to a User Timeline, Group Discussion page, or Public Page Posts page can be downloaded via a typical Timeline-crawl style of capture, however only comments from shared Facebook.com Reels (Reels from another user shared to the timeline) will have comments expanded via this method. In order to properly capture the comments from Reels posted directly from the targeted account, click on the Reel image to navigate to the Video Post Page. Capturing from this page will expand the comments, as well as download the video.
Note: Although X1 Social Discovery can download Mp4s of Reels shared from Instagram, Comment Expansion and capture is not available for these types of posts, as they are not accessible through Facebook.com.
Facebook Reels - Reels Page Captures
Some Facebook pages have a "Reels" tab. Capturing Reels from these pages can be problematic.
In order to capture a Reel from this page, select the desired Reel to navigate to the Video Post Page--however, there is an additional step required! When navigating to the Video Post Page via this tab, Facebook will take you to a Post Page with a url that is missing the Post ID:
While capturing from this page will download the Reel Mp4, this will prevent Social Discovery's automated Comment Expansion from properly expanding all comments and replies. In order to circumvent this from happening, select the Comment icon in the bottom right corner of the post to display the post's comments, then click on the timestamp of one of the comments:
This will prompt a page refresh with the complete url, including the proper Post ID. From here, automated comment expansion and Mp4 video download will work as expected.
Live Videos
Capture of Facebook Live and Streamed videos is supported in v7.1. However, in order to capture these videos, the live event or stream must be completed prior to collection in order for the video download to become available.