How can I download this news video?

January 27, 2009 5:13 PM

I need to download a video from my local ABC affiliate, an ibsys.com site. (If that means anything?) They don't provide a way to do this, and the usual tools are no help. Can you help?

This local news story and the attached video pertain to a family member, and I'd like to save the video for posterity. However, the site doesn't make this easy:
- There's no download button.
- They don't use a simple embed tag. In fact, they never call a unique video URL.
- The "Video Helper" Firefox extension doesn't help here.
- Running a packet sniffer, it appears to go off and connect to a Flash server (?) rather than doing a GET over HTTP, so I'm never able to pull out a unique URL like "/video12345.swf" to save.

Surely, someone's found a way to do this?

posted by fogster to computers & internet (10 comments total)

I've used Replay Media Catcher to download hard-to-get-to embedded flash video.
posted by zsazsa at 5:20 PM on January 27

Yo fogster, I heard you like video, so I linked the video in your Ask Metafilter so you can watch while you ask.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:25 PM on January 27

You might contact the station to request a copy of the video and tell them why.
posted by ae4rv at 5:26 PM on January 27

I should have mentioned that I run Linux, so Replay Media Catcher is out.

I'm able to watch the video, Inspector.Gadget, but the direct link you provide is just a link to the stream. If I try to save it, I get a 173-byte file linking to a mms:// stream of a WMV file. (And trying to grab that file over HTTP gets me... The same 173-byte file. Argh.)
posted by fogster at 5:33 PM on January 27

If you have an mms:// stream, you can download it with mplayer:

mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile video.wmv mms://blahblahblah.com/blahblah.wmv

It'll take a while (the running time of the video), but it'll get it.
posted by zsazsa at 5:57 PM on January 27

Well, I have no idea how to download that with linux but I do know how with windows so I went ahead and did it and uploaded it to senduit. I plugged the asx url into a program called WM Recorder and bam. Sorry I couldn't provide you with a useful answer though.
posted by dead cousin ted at 6:13 PM on January 27

An ASX file is just a playlist. Direct download.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:15 PM on January 27

I second using mplayer, I use it frequently to do just what you want. Sometimes it's tricky to get the right url and command line parameter combination, but it should work if you keep at it.
posted by beowulf573 at 6:17 PM on January 27

oh btw, how did you get the asx url for that video, Inspector.Gadget? I used to use MediaPlayerConnectivity but that doesn't seem to work anymore for some reason.
posted by dead cousin ted at 6:21 PM on January 27

oh btw, how did you get the asx url for that video, Inspector.Gadget? I used to use MediaPlayerConnectivity but that doesn't seem to work anymore for some reason.

Looked in my Firefox cache for an object that contained the relevant JSON (?) request and then opened it in a text editor.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:32 PM on January 27