Save Streaming Videos

[LavisBlade]

Ok I've been setting at my computer for a fairly long time now trying to figure out a way to download streaming videos.

For those of you that dont know these are the videos that you can only load and watch, but not download.

Here is an example of a streaming video that I'm trying to save to my hard drive.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avp/internet_trailer/

Normally to save a file you would right-click the link and "Save Target As..." or "Save Link To Disk..." etc. When you do so though like in the video above you only save a actual link.

So I figure well Quicktime has to save this file somewhere, right?

So I go looking and I searched my entire Hard drive for any form of video. I come up with probaly 1000 or close to videos.... THEN finally atlasted I found a file called avp14blahblah I open it and BOOM! its the same thing I downloaded when I do "Save Target As" . So now since I was getting nowhere I figured I would open the link in Notepad to see if I can find anything... and all my attempts have turned up dry.

So if any of you know how to save Streaming Video please let me know.

Mostly I wanted to be able to save video trailers from apple.com

Thanks for the help.

[WolfmanNCSU]

I have done this before. I will have to find what I used to ripping the video from a website. Its not on this machine here...

I do have my flash ripper though. It does the same thing only with flash files instead of vids.

[LavisBlade]

Well I asked around at school and a person told me to look up URL Snooper.

I guess this program scans the site for hidden URL's then it will post it on "Snooper" then you put the hidden URL into your browser and you can download it... or it's something like that.

Another person said something about a recorder... not really sure what he was talking about, but he said he has a small program that can record on your screen when you activate it...

I havent tried these yet since I've just gotten home.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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Edit: Ok After about 2 hours of messing around with URL Snooper I finally figured it out... If anyone wants to know how to do this let me know and I'll go into more detail.

[WolfmanNCSU]

Sure, I would like to know how. I used a different prog that ripped the vids from the site. Tell me more about your url snooper.

[LavisBlade]

Ok first off you need 2 programs one for finding the url and one to download it.

First I'll tell you where to download both of these.

This guy has a ton of links for URL SNOOPER downloads. If your not a member of one of them groups it take less then a minute to sign up if you have a yahoo account.

http://pub25.ezboard.com/fstreemeboxvcrfrm7.showMessage?topicID=37.topic

Now for the other program... I tried 3 different programs and I like a program called GetRight. It seems to be the fastest and the smallest of the programs.

http://www.getright.com

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Now go to the page for the trailer you want to save and click on the link for Small, Medium or Large. Wait until the trailer starts playing, then switch to Project URL Snooper and look at the results. Click on those entries to display the contents in the bottom window. Now look for a URL that is call "Relative Get Link" under the Protocal colum, you should see what looks like a ridiculously long URL composed of letters and numbers with the trailer file at the end. Almost directly after the filename you should see "Host: a772.g.akamai.net" or something very similar. This is all the info you need to find the file. Open Notepad and type "http://", then copy&paste the entry after "Host:" directly after it, then copy&paste the long url after that and you'll have the URL of the file.

For example, this is a partial display of the data Project URL Snooper turned up for the large version of Aliens Vs Predator(unprintable junk snipped from the beginning);

/5/772/51/e7c0b6361f8538/1a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb12453c02589f25382f668c9329e0375e8177dec6493f46ada/avp_internet_m480.mov HTTP/1.1
Host: a772.g.akamai.net
User-Agent: QuickTime

So the complete URL to that trailer is;

http://a772.g.akamai.net//5/772/51/e7c0b6361f8538/1a1a1aaa2198c627970773d80669d84574a8d80d3cb12453c02589f25382f668c9329e0375e8177dec6493f46ada/avp_internet_m480.mov

(Sorry, I had to break up the URL or it would screw up the formatting of this entire page, just paste it back together)

Compare the above URL to the first batch of data and to see how it all fits together (You take the host and put it in the beginning). Also, use the above as practice and see if you can find the URL for the large version of the Aliens Vs Predator trailer yourself using Project URL Snooper and then compare it to mine above. It's really not that hard once you've done it a couple times.

If downloading from other sites, you might even be able to find the full URL just sitting in Project URL Snooper's results, all ready to be copied. Also, don't be surprised if the URL turns up multiple times in different entries, just look for the one that looks most likely to be what you're after.

Copy&paste that URL into a download manager/accelerator such as GetRight and sit back while it downloads the file to your HD.

[WolfmanNCSU]

Cheers Bro!!

Thanks for the info, that method is way easier than what I used to have to do. I will give it a trail run tonight.

[LavisBlade]

No problem.

If you have any problems, just let me know. I think I covered most of it though.

By the way when you choose an adapter just randomly pick one and if it turns up no results try a different one.