This is a kind of part 2 to my Fedora and YouTube, Part 1, but in reality, it should work with most distributions. So now I can go to YouTube, and listen to jazz selections like this, but what if I want to hear them again? How about if I'm travelling, and I don't have easy access to the web? FireFox has a number of add-in modules to assist with capturing video to the hard drive, but really, it's already there. All it takes is knowing where it is, and what it looks like.
When playing Flash material through YouTube, or a YouTube-like service, the flash stream is saved to /tmp as "Flashxxxxxx" where xxxxxx are some string of random appearing characters. Much like:
[gar@localhost tmp]$ ll F*
-rw------- 1 gar gar 3069078 2008-03-11 17:18 FlashG1eaB1
-rw------- 1 gar gar 69786822 2008-03-11 17:23 Flashw7ZxbW
All I need to do is to move the file, perhaps to the Videos folder in my home directory, and presto! I have a copy of the Flash file. Open a terminal window with Alt-F2, and then enter konsole in the command box. Navigate to the temp directory with cd /tmp. Figure out the file name with ll F* and then move the completed file with mv Flashw7ZxbW ~/Video/My_Saved_Movie.flv I didn't even need to add an extra extension to Firefox to accomplish the file save. (note: the temporary file will probably be deleted when you close the flash window, so move the file first.)
Now that I have the Flash file, I need to be able to play it. The hard drive install of Fedora 8 Live KDE includes Kaffeine which will work perfectly. Open the home directory browser by clicking on the house icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Click on the Videos folder to open Videos, Right click on My_Saved_Movie.flv, and Open With -> Kaffeine. If Kaffeine is not listed, select Other, and find Kaffeine under the Multimedia tab. You may also want to check the box to make this a permanent association.
When you select Kaffeine, a Kaffeine window will open up, and your video will start playing, whether or not the computer has an internet connection at the time.
not only save, but convert and rip audio too
I use this site to not only download but also rip the audio and convert to numerous other formats. In addition, it also supports the new hi quality you tube videos. Very cool and easy to use, they even have a firefox plugin :)
YouTubeRobot.com today
YouTubeRobot.com today announces YouTube Robot 2.0, a tool that enables you to download video from YouTube.com onto your PC, convert it to various formats to watch it when you are on the road on mobile devices like mobile phone, iPod, iPhone, Pocket PC, PSP, or Zune.
YouTube Robot allows you to search for videos using keywords or browse video by category, author, channel, language, tags, etc. When you find something noteworthy, you can preview the video right in YouTube Robot and then download it onto the hard disk drive. The speed, at which you will be downloading, is very high: up to 5 times faster than other software when you download a single file and up to 4 times faster when you download multiple files at a time.
Manual download is not the only option with YouTube Robot. You may as well schedule the download and conversion tasks to be executed automatically, even when you are not around. Downloading is followed by conversion to the format of your choice and uploading videos to a mobile device (if needed). For example, you can plug in iPod, select the video, go to bed, and when you wake up next morning, your iPod will be ready to play new YouTube videos.
Product page: www.youtuberobot.com
Direct download link: www.youtuberobot.com/download/utuberobot.exe
Company web-site: www.youtuberobot.com
Saving those flash videos
That's pretty cool, Gar. I never knew that. What's cooler is that it doesn't have to be YouTube. I checked a small handful of sites that do Flash videos and it works for everything I've tried. Thanks for the tip.
-- Marcel