Download video in Python using requests module results in black video - python-3.x

Question

This is the URL I tried to download: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-jEqo9Bgk9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
This is a minimal reproducible example:
import os
import requests
def main():
filename = 'test.mp4'
r = requests.get('https://www.instagram.com/p/B-jEqo9Bgk9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link', stream=True)
with open(os.path.join('.', filename), 'wb') as f:
print('Dumping "{0}"...'.format(filename))
for chunk in r.iter_content(chunk_size=1024):
print(chunk)
if chunk:
f.write(chunk)
f.flush()
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
The code runs fine but the video does not play. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Your code is running perfectly fine, but you did not provide the correct link for the video. The link you used is for the Instagram web page, not the video. So you should not save the content as 'test.mp4', but rather as 'test.html'. If you open the file in a text editor (for example Notepad++), you will see that it contains the HTML code of the web page.
You'll need to parse the HTML to acquire the actual video URL, and then you can use the same code to download the video using that URL.
Currently, the line that starts with meta property="og:video" content= contains the actual video URL, but that may change in the future.
(Note that copyright may apply for videos on Instagram. I assume you have the rights to download and save this video.)