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Hi there,
There's a website I use to watch flash videos from.
Because of bandwidth restrictions, now I need to download them. But I haven't been able to figure out what's the link to the flash file by looking at the web page source code.
Do you guys know of a way to see where the stream is being downloaded from? Some command line magic maybe?
Thanks.
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Look inside the /tmp directory. There is the flashplugin cache.
And take a look at the downloadhelper ff plugin.
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The 'DownloadHelper' plugin for Firefox is great for exactly this
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I just started manually copying flash videos from the /tmp folder (you have to first download them through the player completely)...although DowloadHelper and a bunch of other firefox add-ons also do the job.
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Thanks for the tips.
Downloadhelper:
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work in my case: DownloadHelper only offers me to download flash adverts, not the actual video.
Check this page for instance. The video starts with an advertisement (which DownloadHelper sees), then comes the actual video.
flashplugin cache:
I couldn't find it in /tmp...
Last edited by brazzmonkey (2009-09-29 07:19:41)
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Ugh, man... That sucks. I don't have any other suggestions, sorry
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Try the NetVideoHunter add-on.
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Nope. Same issue.
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Try flashgot...it seems to put a download link in the bottom statusbar for a video (works for me, you click it, it starts wget and downloads your video)
What site are you trying this on ? First try youtube, it has to work...and the videos should be straight in the /tmp folder with some weird name and no extension..if you use a graphical file browser you will pick it apart by the thumbnail
EDIT: Oh, I see...that site is BAAD
Last edited by moljac024 (2009-09-29 09:26:37)
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Doesn't work either. Only thing I'm able to retrieve is the video ad.
Check out http://www.canalplus.fr/c-humour/pid177 … e-net.html
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With Firefox, Flash videos are saved to Firefox's cache. The cache directory is '~/.mozilla/firefox/<RandomCharacters>/Cache/'
Wait until the target video has fully loaded in the browser and pause it (or keep it paused) then check the Firefox cache directory. The video file is usually easy to determine, it will have a very recent time stamp and a size of several MB. The cached videos will not be the files labeled '_CACHE_???_'. Copy the candidate video file, giving it a '.flv' or even a '.swf' extension and try to play it with your video player.
This usually works for me but I can't get it to work with some of the links given above.
Last edited by thisoldman (2009-09-29 10:02:58)
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I haven't been able to locate the cached file.
Anyway, that's not the point: I need the original URL so that I can schedule downloads.
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Isn't there some kind of network monitor or something that whould show me which connections are active and corresponding URLs?
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There are some flash movies which aren't saved to cache, I've run across them before.
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Ok, but that's not the point. Cached or not cached, there should be a way to found out what's the source file's URL...
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Don't bother with any of the browser based things. Hands down the best tool is get_flash_videos. If you are stuck on a machine where you can't install GFV, use clipnabber.com. Not as capable, but they are the second best option.
edit: ugh, that site is hideous. My apologies for not actually testing it first. It looks like the video is a two part thing. Do a source search for "flashvideo_v2". You can see the videoID there, but it just passes a slew of variable to http://player.canalplus.fr/embed/flash/ … barque.swf. You've got two options. One is to download the SWF, decompile it, and then run "strings" on the decompile. Somewhere if there will be with URL of video, sans the videoID. The second options is to manually call the SWF, removing one option at a time. Trial and error, until something good happens.
Or just report the site as "not working" to the GFV people. They are pretty good about adding more features.
Last edited by keenerd (2009-09-29 15:12:51)
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get_flash_videos failed at finding flash streams, and clipnabber doesn't support the website which stores the videos I'd like to get...
Woops, sorry I just noticed you updated your post.
Last edited by brazzmonkey (2009-09-29 15:15:14)
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And running
swfdump -D CanalPlayerEmbarque.swf | grep "http" | grep -v "adobe"
swfdump -D CanalPlayerEmbarque.swf | grep -A 5 -B 5 "videoId"
is not finding anything useful. Sorry.
Last edited by keenerd (2009-09-29 15:48:54)
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I'm getting closer...
Flashgot finds out the advert movie is
http://vod-flash.canalplus.fr/WWWPLUS/PROGRESSIF/0909/CLASSIQUE_VIDEO_090914_CAN_100661_video_H.flv#/P_pites_sur_le_Net_CLASSIQUE_VIDEO_090914_CAN_100661_video_H.flv
I guess the second part of URL (after #) is what I'm actually looking for. Yet I have to find the whole URL.
Last edited by brazzmonkey (2009-09-29 15:54:57)
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What comes to my mind is that there may be no externally accessible URL of the file you want. The '#' could well be a signal to resolve the URL using a server internal database after the commercial has been sent and confirmed by the player.
I vaguely remember there are some access redirection tricks in flash which are not easily circumvented.
Last edited by bernarcher (2009-09-29 19:36:02)
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I think probably what you are talking about is rtmp streams. Yeah, bernarcher is right they hide the url somehow. There's a program that was previously able to do discover and download a rtmp stream called rtmpdump but from what I heard they were 'encouraged' to ammend the code.
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I found this script on french ubuntu forums. Somehow it does the job.
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