How to register for Japanese video site Nico Nico Douga
Written on January 15, 2008 – 12:03 am
Mike Sheetal, Next Web WebTipr in Japan
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When writing a recent article about the biggest internet stories in Japan for 2007, I wrote about probably the biggest story of the year, hot-shot video site Nico Nico Douga. This site is uniquely Japanese and has some truly strange and bizarre content. By using time referenced text chat on top of the video feeds, the site manages to create a unique social landscape that western sites have yet to match.
This is the 7th most popular site in Japan after just 1 year of existence. Many of the funny jokes and comments are in Japanese, but I have still had a lot of people asking me to show them how to access the site.
When navigating a foreign language site you always have a few challenges but you can usually get by with a few guesses and some lucky clicking. For Nico Nico Douga, this is a bit more difficult than usual because you need to register first before you can see anything.
So, in order to help more people understand what this phenomenon is, I have put together this handy guide to registering and getting to the fun stuff so you can all benefit from my 6 years of clicking through Japanese websites.
1) Getting to the Register Form
The first thing is actually knowing you need to register to see something, but I have implied that, so lets get started.
From the home page, click the Registration button as marked in the screen shot below.
2) Registering
Registering becomes a lot easier when you know what all the fields are. I have tried to give a basic breakdown of all the important parts of the registration form. Follow the following screen shot for a guide on what to enter and where.
Fill out all the fields, because in typical Japanese style, EVERYTHING is a required field.
If it sends you back to the same page after you submit, that means you had an error somewhere. The most likely error is someone has chosen the same username, so the first thing to do is try a very obscure username. If you still have troubles, go through each field and double check you don’t have too many or too few characters (I have included limitations in the translations) and also make sure your age is something believable (ie. not this year).
3) Confirm Registration Details
The registration confirmation page is much easier than it looks. If you got this far, you have passed the main tests, so all you need to do is pass the human check and hit submit.
The human check is the common read the text in the image trick. It is all in western characters, so you shouldn’t have any problems. If for any reason you can’t read what is in the image, click the button next to it and you will get a fresh image.
The submit bottom is underneath there, but note, it is not the bottom button (that one will take you back to edit your details). Refer to the image for locations of where to press.
You should now see a message telling you that an email has been sent to your registered email address and you should click the confirmation link inside within 24 hours to complete your registration.
4) Check your email
You should now receive an email with the confirmation link. The mail will come from “info” and have a Japanese title.
There is only one link in the mail so not much to get confused with. Click it!
And you should get to a confirmation page like this…
You can now start to explore. The Nico Nico Douga link on that page will get you to the start with the latest news page, and you can then start clicking through the tabs on the page to check out what recent videos are available.
5) You are in!
Now that you are in you will need to explore a bit by yourself. I will give you one more screen shot as a guide, but it is up to you. It is a site where the adventurous will be rewarded.
enjoy!
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17 Responses to “How to register for Japanese video site Nico Nico Douga”
By Isaac D. on Jan 15, 2008 | Reply
Thank you so much! This was really helpful! I appreciate your work with this very much.
By Jen on Jan 19, 2008 | Reply
I got through the registration process and all, but I was just wondering whether it is possible to download videos onto your computer. Since Babelfish doesn’t work too well, I thought maybe someone here might know…..
By Mike Sheetal on Jan 20, 2008 | Reply
@Jen : There is no way download the videos from the site itself. They are actually very protective of their content. There may be some sites similar to the ones used for Youtube that allow you to strip out the flash video, but that would leave you without the text content as that is just included as a layer above the video.
By fixkk on Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
How to nico nici douga show my blog
By Jen on Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
Alright, I’m back with another question…… is there a ‘favorite’ feature where you can add videos to a favorite file like on YouTube?
By Steven on Feb 1, 2008 | Reply
To add to favorite:
Above the video, look for a button with the following text “コメント保存”. Then you’ll be taken to another page, click “保存する” to confirm adding the video to your favorites (the button next to it is to cancel the favorite).
Near the top under Menu, you’ll see “マイページ” (or http://www.nicovideo.jp/my), click that to go to your favorite.
As for downloading the video, Orbit works pretty well.
By BenHo on Feb 2, 2008 | Reply
I’m sure that the orbit program works, but could you show us how? I can’t figure out how to get it to download videos from nico nico.
By Britt on Feb 3, 2008 | Reply
This will probably make me sound very stupid, but how exactly do you post comments on videos on Nico Nico Douga?
By Steven on Feb 4, 2008 | Reply
OK, so lately I’ve been grabbing a few videos so here’s the three methods that I use.
All the videos will be named “smile.flv” I think, so just rename it to something more meaningful to you. Note that saving these videos will not save the comments. If you want comments, you’ll have to rely on some screen capture program or some other way.
Method 1
Use http://www.vid-dl.net/, however you need to have a window/tab where you are already logged in to grab the videos. Afterwards, it’s as easy as pasting the link to that particular video and then just clicking “Download FLV”. This generally works though sometimes it doesn’t.
Method 2
With Orbit Downloader, open up Grab++ before going to that particular video (or refresh the page if it’s already open). Then wait until the video is starting to play (pause it if you want) and look at Grab++ for something called “smile.flv” (it should be the largest file).
Method 3
Open up that video in IE and let it load completely. Then look inside “C:\Documents and Settings\USER NAME\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files” for “smile.flv” (sorting it by Last Accessed might be helpful). You may also want to clear it before so you don’t see too many files but that’s up to you.
I prefer to use 2 since it’s pretty fast but 1 is easy too. Method 3 is when all else fails or if you want to watch the video completely and then save.
———-
As for posting comments, I think right under where the video normally shows, there are 3 things to pay attention to. The leftmost controls how your comment shows up. The middle one is most likely the time you want it to show. The rightmost is the actual text. I think that’s how it goes anyways, I’ve never actually done it. Also note that certain ways of displaying comments is restricted to Premium members. Please keep it friendly for all the Japanese viewers :)
By Solid Snake on Feb 11, 2008 | Reply
wow thanks so much!!!
By kaliwete on Feb 13, 2008 | Reply
Hello! Can you please teach me how upload videos to that site? Thank you
By Rikimtasu on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Here a tuturial on uploading video to nico:
http://moemania.org/uncategori.....covideojp/
Plus a way to save nicovideos as format other then flv:
http://www.butsu-yoku.com/
By kaliwete on Feb 22, 2008 | Reply
thank you
By Yumiko on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
can you please tell me how to watch a video without all those comments in the video screen?
haha, i don’t know if you have understood what i mean….
By Jen on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
There’s a little button under the screen that says Comment, you can turn it on and off when you want
By Yumiko on Feb 28, 2008 | Reply
thanks ^^