Saving a FoxNews video stream.

April 19, 2007 8:13 PM

How do I find the source of a FoxNews.com video stream?

The end goal is to save a video broadcast from foxnews.com. I understand that it's streaming video and it needs to be captured as it's being broadcast. I think I can handle that given the answers to other similar questions. What I'm finding difficult is determining the direct link to the stream over at Foxnews.com. All their videos first load an ad before redirecting to the video.

Let's assume (for example) the video in question is here.

What is the url for the direct stream to save - and how can I figure it out myself?

posted by whatisish to computers & internet (5 comments total)

The video from your link is a SWF file located here.

I found this by using the TamperData Firefox extension, which shows everey single file your browser loads. Once the pre-video ad loaded, I cleared the file list. The next file to load was the video. You can double click on the entry to get the URL.

Most "streaming" video is with ASX files, which are a bit more complicated, but this is pretty straightforward.

BTW, just right click on the link and hit whatever is closest to "save as" to save it.

Hope this helps.
posted by niles at 8:31 PM on April 19, 2007

If you look at the url you provided and the one that niles dug up for the .swf file, you can see that you can derive his url from yours now that you know the mapping.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:52 PM on April 19, 2007

Thanks so much - both of you. TamperData is exactly what I needed. Excellent answer(s).
posted by whatisish at 8:56 PM on April 19, 2007

You can see every file that IE loads by looking in the cache. (You can do the same with FireFox 2; you don't need any kind of special plugin.) You can make a copy, and identify the exact URL from which it came.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 10:50 PM on April 19, 2007

Thanks Steven. I was mistaken that the FoxNews videos were streamed and, so, didn't check the cache. My bad.
posted by whatisish at 9:55 AM on April 20, 2007