Dailymotion is the largest video platform in France, a top-five platform across continental Europe, and home to European news, sports, and entertainment content that does not appear on YouTube. For users in North America it is often the platform where content removed from YouTube still lives — older TV broadcasts, music videos pulled from major label channels, and full-episode uploads of European TV shows. This guide explains how TubePull's Dailymotion downloader works, what HD means on Dailymotion, and the practical workflow for saving videos.
Quick start: Open TubePull, paste any Dailymotion video URL (dailymotion.com/video/x1a2b3c), pick MP4 at the highest available resolution, and download. The walkthrough below covers what does and doesn't work, geo-restrictions, and Dailymotion's HD ladder.
Why Dailymotion still matters
- Europe-first content: French, German, and Italian broadcasters often post to Dailymotion before — or instead of — YouTube. Eurovision clips, regional news segments, and football highlights frequently appear there first.
- Content removed from YouTube: When a video gets a copyright takedown on YouTube, mirrors often surface on Dailymotion.
- Longer-form content: Dailymotion's per-video limits have historically been more permissive for non-monetized uploaders, leading to long-form lectures, documentaries, and event archives.
- Less aggressive ad-loading: Dailymotion's pre-roll and mid-roll model is less aggressive than YouTube's.
Dailymotion's video quality tiers
| Quality | Notes |
|---|---|
| 240p / 380p (Low) | Legacy SD, present on most older videos |
| 480p (Standard) | Default mobile quality |
| 720p (HD) | Most modern uploads |
| 1080p (Full HD) | Monetized creators and partner accounts |
| 1440p / 2160p (4K) | Premium uploads, less common than on YouTube |
The uploader's account tier determines what Dailymotion stores at the high end. Free accounts cap at 720p; partner accounts can upload up to 4K. TubePull returns the highest tier Dailymotion stored for the video.
For a comparison of download quality considerations across platforms, see the best YouTube quality settings guide — the encoding considerations are similar.
URL formats that work
- Standard video pages:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1a2b3c - Embedded player URLs:
https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x1a2b3c— TubePull extracts the underlying video ID - Mobile URLs:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1a2b3c?playlist=xxxx— query string is stripped - Channel video pages:
https://www.dailymotion.com/channel-name/video/x1a2b3c - Old short format:
https://dai.ly/x1a2b3c— these redirect to the canonical URL and are followed automatically
Geo-restrictions
Dailymotion has more aggressive geo-restrictions than YouTube. European broadcasters frequently restrict content to the EU or to specific countries, enforced by server-side IP filtering at Dailymotion's CDN.
Region-locked videos may be unavailable through TubePull. If you encounter a video unavailable in your region error, your options are:
- Use a VPN to position yourself in the appropriate region, then use the yt-dlp command-line tool locally from your VPN-connected machine
- Find an unrestricted mirror of the same content
- Contact the broadcaster for a non-restricted version
What does not work
- Region-locked videos (see above)
- Removed or deleted videos: when a video is taken down, the source file is removed from Dailymotion's CDN
- Live streams in progress: not a finite file until they end and Dailymotion archives them
- Private videos: require authentication
- DRM-protected partner content: a small subset of major-studio content is delivered with DRM and cannot be downloaded through any compliant tool
Audio-only Dailymotion download
To get only the audio from a Dailymotion video — a music video, lecture, or interview — paste the URL and pick MP3.
Comparing TubePull to dedicated Dailymotion downloaders
Dedicated Dailymotion downloaders are mostly ad-heavy web tools. Practical differences for TubePull:
- Multi-platform. Same paste field handles YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, and others.
- No ad-gates. Downloads start immediately.
- History page. Pro accounts have download history.
- Built on yt-dlp. Dailymotion's extractor is well-maintained; when Dailymotion changes its API, yt-dlp typically ships a fix within days.
For French and European users who primarily download from Dailymotion, a dedicated tool may feel more familiar. For users who pull from multiple platforms, TubePull's unified workflow is simpler.
Use cases worth mentioning
- News archival. Journalists and researchers preserving European news broadcasts not available on YouTube. See the journalism archive workflow for the framework.
- Educational content. Long-form lectures and conference talks — particularly common in French academic content.
- TV episode and broadcast archival. Older TV broadcasts uploaded to Dailymotion that have no other accessible source.
Each of these has different legal considerations. Personal archival of public broadcasts is generally fair use in most jurisdictions; redistribution requires the rights holder's permission. For a fuller treatment, see Is it legal to download YouTube videos — Dailymotion's Terms of Use follow similar principles.
Ready to download from Dailymotion
Open the Dailymotion downloader, paste any public video URL, and pick MP4 at the highest resolution offered. For multi-platform downloading — YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok — the same paste field covers all of them.