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Where do I go to download videos from ChinesePod YouTube account?

I Have a Question
#1

I was very excited to see that ChinesePod has been uploading new content to YouTube. I enjoyed watching these videos, especially the Chengyu Stories series.

I’m having trouble finding many of these great videos on the ChinesePod website, which I pay a monthly fee to access. Can someone help me navigate to these videos, so I can take advantage of the features that are included in my monthly subscription (such as downloading video files, exercises, and expansion sentences)?

On the other hand, if most of the content is going to be available exclusively on YouTube for free going forward, it will definitely help with my budget! :sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

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#2

There is usually a lag, sometimes considerable, between the time of posting videos to YouTube and putting them up on the ChinesePod website. After the video production is finished they may release it to YouTube, but all of the premium features that paying customers get such as pdf files and exercises may not have been done at the time of publishing the video on YouTube.

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#3

Hello, that’s a very good question. Actually the shorter videos such as Chengyu stories series will not be published on the platform because they are not considered full ChinesePod lessons. On the other hand, we do publish the full lessons on youtube first and then on the website. However, the lessons on youtube do not come with downloadable resources, exercises, and the videos will not be up there for a long time.

#4

Thanks for your response, Becca. I’m sorry to hear this. I understand that the ChinesePod team may not have enough staff capacity to create vocabulary lists, etc. for all of their shorter lessons, but I would at least hope that all ChinesePod content would be findable in a central place and available for download. I think the idea that I now have to search in two completely different places for ChinesePod content is a little frustrating. This is something I will have to keep in mind when considering whether or not to renew my subscription.

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#5

Actually if you consider the “old dashboard” of ChinesePod there are three places that you have to search to find all the content. Quite a treasure trove of content is still there:
https://chinesepod.com/library/channels/?culture-shows

Do you know that there is also a Chengyu series of five “full lessons” that you can access on the main site as well?
https://www.chinesepod.com/playlists/962

#6

Sadly, because these new shorter series (like Mandarin slang) are not uploaded to the Chinesepod database, they aren’t even available via the Old Dashboard :frowning:

This is especially sad because I see that the YouTube channel is uploading new content several times each week, while only uploading a full lesson to this site maybe once every few weeks.

I do love the old dashboard. I use it every day, because it’s the only way I can download audio from the dictionary.

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#7

It’s clear they’re just looking to profit off of YouTube ad revenue and don’t care AT ALL about what their subscribers are getting. When you charge $30/mo/subscriber but don’t need to produce content, it’s not possible that you don’t have the budget to hire someone to make a transcript of the YouTube videos or make the videos available in one central place.

The fact that I made a remark about the lack of response from Chinese Pod almost a month ago about how they’re slow to respond to our requests and they STILL haven’t even tried to come in an defend themselves means that they genuinely do no care about the requests from their subscribers. As an on and off subscriber since the beginning, this is nothing short of disappointment.

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#8

Yeah, I’m on the verge of cancelling my subscription as well.

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#9

This from a subscriber point of view makes little sense to me. Why would both types of lessons go on youtube first, when people are paying for the content on the website? Hmm, so I should download all the current content and then use my youtube premium account moving forward to download all the upcoming content for free. Thanks for the clarification!

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#10

You should not assume that what was written on June 4th still holds true. The last time fresh content was posted to the site was June 9th. (“Turndown Service”). After that ChinesePod stopped making lessons with notes, exercises, vocabulary, etc., although the video for the sequel for their “hospitality series” (“Luggage Help”) did appear on the YouTube channel.

Currently ChinesePod is just an archive, and the posts on YouTube are just samples from the existing previously produced content. You can think of it as YouTube being used to direct traffic to the website to convert users into paying customers who will make recurring payments in exchange for access to all the old lessons and supplementary materials not available on YouTube. Enjoy the free samples as you wish, but access to the library will have a recurring “library fee.” If you think about the economics from the company’s point of view you might see the logic behind it.

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