Saturday 27 February 2010

TIP: Grabbing video content from webpage

Two words: browser cache

You don't need any utility software to grab webpage video content and what software is on offer is probably infected! Avoid sites offering 'Free Youtube Downloader' or whatever.

There are Firefox add-ons to grab video content but I haven't tried any of these yet. Hmm, the add-ons would be useful for M$ users though! Laughing

When you view video on your linux system with Firefox ([K]ubuntu at least) the video clip is cached into a temporary directory. Wait until the video clip has fully loaded and you will find the file in your user's ~/tmp/ ( or /tmp/) directory. Simply copy it to somewhere else before you close the webpage. Because, as soon as you close or navigate away from that webpage, the cached file is deleted. So far I have seen filenames starting with 'Flash' but, just look for a recently created file.

On my Kubuntu 9.10, I play back the content quite happily using Xine.

Now, most YouTube stuff plays OK but some have garbled / distorted audio. Mainly U.S. content. I seem to have a codec missing. I'll post here if I fix this. 



* UPDATE *


 Hmm,

I seem to have forgotten that I had previously installed a firefox add-on called '1-Click YouTube Video Downloader'. Quite easy to use, it adds some extra links in the page, just under the Video window.

It allows you to download YouTube Videos in FLV and MP4 (both High Definition and iPod High-Quality) in a single click.



Categories: Linux, OS
Tags: Kubuntu, Linux, video, grab, grabbing

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