Pulling a flash movie from a website?

[NeedinHelp001]

We did a project at school and our professor converted it to flash and posted it online. Now, I can visit the website and see the movie, but there's no option to save it, just a bunch of hooey about macromedia flash player and a few viewing options. Is there some sort of program I need to get flash movies off of a website?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff

[texanpenguin]

If you can post the site's URL, we can easily tell you the URL.

Otherwise, the easiest way is to View the Source (Cmd+Opt+U), then do a Find (Cmd+F) for ".swf", then copy everything between the quotation marks that it found and put it after the last slash in the URL.

That is:

if the thing says:

...src="flash/flashthing.swf"...
on www.mysite.com/site/index.html

you copy flash/flashthing.swf and put it after the last / in the URL:

www.mysite.com/site/flash/flashthing.swf



And then File > Save.

[fryke]

You need the URL of the Flash file. If it's embedded on a HTML-page, just show the source-code and look for ".swf" without the quotes. It might be called "media/thisfileyouretalkingabout.swf" and since it's on "www.somesite.com" you'd have to put those together to "www.somesite.com/media/thefileyouretalkingabout.swf". Copy the URL into the clipboard, go to Safari's Downloads window and hit paste. Voilà.

[fryke]

Oh. I didn't see your answer when I hit "post".

[Mikuro]

Yeah, that's the easiest way.

Another way is to copy the file out of Flash's cache as it's running in your browser. See Pacohope's instructions at [HOWTO] Convert Google Videos to iPod. I use this technique a lot. It even works for evil sites like YouTube that go out of their way to "mask" the actual content.

The cached files will be in an invisible folder. To access this invisible folder, use the Finder's "Go to Folder" command (under the Go menu), and enter the path (e.g., "/private/var/tmp/").

[sinclair_tm]

well, i'm having no luck, with either set of instructions. here's the site. my goal is to be able to watch it after i loose the internet connection late at night.

[Lt Major Burns]

meh bugger all the source code....

safari, Window > Activity. this shows all the things in a list that are happening within safari. simply look for the big .swf and alt+click it to download.

[Mikuro]

Originally Posted by sinclair_tm

well, i'm having no luck, with either set of instructions. here's the site. my goal is to be able to watch it after i loose the internet connection late at night.

Looks like it's stored in your /tmp folder, in the form of three files with the name "WebKitPlugInStream*" (no extension). I have no idea how to actually play those files once rescued from the temp folder, though. The big one seems to be an flv, but MPlayer can't handle the video. The little ones are just the player interface template swf files.