UPDATE: This method works but the embedded video expires after about a month, and the code must be updated. It might be possible to try to modify the embedded code to make it expire later, but I didn’t test it.
With the introduction of Google+ instant upload, many people started automatically backing up their photos and videos in Google Plus (and many started actively using G+ for this reason).
This is of course great, but there’s also a limitation: you can share the uploaded photos/videos only in Google Plus. I think it works this way to increase the popularity of the social network but that’s not very comfortable, expecially when you have ~300Mb videos already uploaded but you can’t even move them to Youtube, to share and embed them where you do prefer (eg. facebook, twitter, personal website).
I searched the Internet a lot before understanding that probably Google doesn’t want you to share Google Plus videos outside its social network, and i decided to “manually” find a way.
After a little trying i found out how to to embed Google+ videos in your personal website. I found that you can easily extract the html code to embed the video directly from G+:
The steps are few and pretty easy (i assume you use Chrome/Chromium browser because it is very comfortable for inspecting the DOM, but it can certainly be done in Firefox too):
- Go to Google Plus, find the video you want to embed and simply play it.
- When the video is playing, pause it and inspect the html (you can do this with chrome/chromium browsers by right-clicking -> Inspect Element). Be sure to right click near the video, but not on it (you can’t, it’s flash content)
- Search the DOM tree for the “<embed>” tag (See the picture)
- Then right click on it -> Copy as HTML (on Chrome/Chromium)
- Now you have an HTML code representing the video: we’re almost done! It should look like this:
<object style=”width: 1280px; height: 758px;” width=”1280″ height=”758″ classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″ bgcolor=”#fff”><param name=”src” value=”//www.youtube.com/get_player?enablejsapi=1&cc_load_policy=2″ /><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” /><param name=”scale” value=”noScale” /><param name=”wmode” value=”opaque” /><param name=”flashvars” value=”fmt_list=22%2F1280x720%2F9%2F0%2F115%2C35%2F854x480%2F9%2F0%2F115%2C34%2F640x360%2F9%2F0%2F115%2C5%2F426x240%2F7%2F0%2F0&fmt_stream_map=22%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D22%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D8477241CE149151477AC7B259B31E65C94DBCA32.B804A52B1EDAD148A6DFDC7B417E3A922CC0B2CF%26key%3Dlh1%2C35%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D35%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3DB6AFABA155F7C5294D346C9EF74763382E0A9A3A.7B6B5451FA3051A6A28AFB37C923501CA93FEE8C%26key%3Dlh1%2C34%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D34%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3DCCA2684867495F12648E4B0D52504D7330BBDFFB.A93A0E1B7C81630C878E1E8B8AE6EC1330008D67%26key%3Dlh1%2C5%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D5%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D1DADD9325E60ABC22DDC8FE45B84E89AC03BCB89.223CC73A0690DFD6584BF8BEFBA379135311CD94%26key%3Dlh1&video_id=picasacid&fs=1&hl=it&autoplay=1&ps=picasaweb&playerapiid=uniquePlayerId&t=1&vq=large&auth_timeout=86400000000&ttsurl=https://plus.google.com/_/photos/timedtext/100072144891672956015/5841126284110989458?&ttspolicyfile=https://plus.google.com/_/photos/timedtext/crossdomain.xml” /><embed style=”width: 1280px; height: 758px;” width=”1280″ height=”758″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”//www.youtube.com/get_player?enablejsapi=1&cc_load_policy=2″ allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” scale=”noScale” wmode=”opaque” flashvars=”fmt_list=22%2F1280x720%2F9%2F0%2F115%2C35%2F854x480%2F9%2F0%2F115%2C34%2F640x360%2F9%2F0%2F115%2C5%2F426x240%2F7%2F0%2F0&fmt_stream_map=22%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D22%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D8477241CE149151477AC7B259B31E65C94DBCA32.B804A52B1EDAD148A6DFDC7B417E3A922CC0B2CF%26key%3Dlh1%2C35%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D35%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3DB6AFABA155F7C5294D346C9EF74763382E0A9A3A.7B6B5451FA3051A6A28AFB37C923501CA93FEE8C%26key%3Dlh1%2C34%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D34%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3DCCA2684867495F12648E4B0D52504D7330BBDFFB.A93A0E1B7C81630C878E1E8B8AE6EC1330008D67%26key%3Dlh1%2C5%7Chttp%3A%2F%2Fredirector.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D10af9fef8ab88134%26itag%3D5%26source%3Dpicasa%26cmo%3Dsensitive_content%3Dyes%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1363183661%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Csource%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D1DADD9325E60ABC22DDC8FE45B84E89AC03BCB89.223CC73A0690DFD6584BF8BEFBA379135311CD94%26key%3Dlh1&video_id=picasacid&fs=1&hl=it&autoplay=1&ps=picasaweb&playerapiid=uniquePlayerId&t=1&vq=large&auth_timeout=86400000000&ttsurl=https://plus.google.com/_/photos/timedtext/100072144891672956015/5841126284110989458?&ttspolicyfile=https://plus.google.com/_/photos/timedtext/crossdomain.xml” bgcolor=”#fff” /></object>
Now you can (if needed) modify some parameter you find in the code, i recommend to change the
autoplay=1
to prevent the video from autostarting when the page loads.
This is not a official way to share Google Plus videos, of course, so this method may not work in the future, or the videos may someday disappear. But so far, it has worked for me.