Help me record a flash stream
March 21, 2011 11:44 AM   Subscribe

I'm looking for a way to record/save a movie file that is streamed through flash. The source for the page indicates that player.swf is the function used to display the video, and the source of the video stream is a .m4v file. However, I cannot directly access the .m4v file by putting that address into my browser (I get an permission denied error). Is there an (ideally free) way to record or save this stream to a normal video file on my computer? I'm on a Mac.
posted by philosophygeek to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Do you use Firefox? If so, install the DownloadHelper add-on.
posted by prinado at 12:10 PM on March 21, 2011


Are you using Safari? Try opening the Activity window, then load the page and hit play on the video. Quickly find the video file in the list of files in the Activity window, hold down Option and double-click it.

This works for some sites (notably SoundCloud's mp3s that are supposed to not be downloadable) as long as you start the download within a few seconds of the browser's initial request for the file.
posted by bcwinters at 12:12 PM on March 21, 2011


If the movie is on one of its supported sites, this is quite handy. As a bonus it allows you to schedule the downloads, which is nice if you're bandwidth-capped during daylight hours.
posted by ook at 1:06 PM on March 21, 2011


Seconding Download helper. If the .m4v file is accessible, it will find it.
posted by malaprohibita at 1:54 PM on March 21, 2011


Before installing anything, you may wish to try deturl, which is web-based and works with quite a lot of streaming sites.

There are a number of reasons why the m4v might not be accessible directly, such as URL mungling or HTTP referrer issues. Feel free to post the page link here if possible.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 3:49 AM on March 22, 2011


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