Adobe / Macromedia Flash Capture

Flash stream recorders that support both RTMP and HTTP protocols:

• Replay Media Catcher
• Orbit Downloader - Free Software, No Spyware Detected
• WM Recorder
• FLV Recorder

Stream ripping and video hacking specific to Adobe Flash videos like what YouTube uses and many online videos that can be viewed from web sites that do not offer a download option. Can't find it in your browser cache? That SWF file won't play? Read on...

Orbit Downloader is free and seems to work with some tweaking. People say it won't work but it does if you spend enough time to learn it and try different settings. We had some work to get it going on our web browser compatibility. Also, be sure you understand that it doesn't re-encode or convert video files for you. It gets them but you have to find software to play the file in the native format. There is a learning curve with this application. The following steps were used to capture a video from a commercial web site.

Use Grab++ a feature of Orbit Downloader to monitor a video being played on the web browser though Flash.

Sometimes the swf file is a code to launch another media like a flv file. On some commercial sites the flv files are hidden/protected so they may be difficult to track down and identify. The Grab++ program sniffs what is going on with the web browser when it plays a video via Flash. You will see all of the files being streamed to your browser. The big file is typically the video.

In our experiment a swf file launched another swf file which represented a custom video player interface. It also launched a streaming flv file. None of this could be detected with the browser and Flash player alone. Grab++ displayed everything being downloaded.

Once the flv file was downloaded it seemed to refuse to play in the Adobe Flash player.

To play flv files that will not play in Adobe Flash Player we used VLC (VideoLAN Player) version .9.8a. VLC Player opened and played both the audio and video of the flv file. Older versions of VLC only played the audio. If the video is missing it doesn't mean your flv file is incomplete. It probably indicates the flv file version is too new for your version of VLC player to decode. So far VLC Player version .9.8a has successfully decoded and played both audio and video for the flv files we have tested.

• VLC media player (VideoLAN) - Free Software, No Spyware Detected

If video or audio won't play, typically one or the other, rarely both you may need to upgrade VLC player to latest version. Even with latest version some audio types are not supported. See message:

Error Message:

No suitable decoder module:
VLC does not support the audio or video format "undf". 
Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this.

This YouTube video plays silent because VLC cannot decode the audio. You can wait for a newer version of VLC to be release or try another flv file player.

There is a way to capture ANY YouTube video, or any other web site streaming video. It cannot be stopped. There's software to do most, sometimes more than one program is necessary. If software fails the analog hole cannot be stopped so anything can be captured and recorded.

Orbit Downloader (Free)

Orbit downloader can capture Youtube video being played with practically any web browser. However, a special feature of Orbit Downloader is a plugin that allows user to click button over the video and capture from the browser window without having to use Grab++. It is faster and easier to grab a video from sites like Youtube with the browser integration. Unfortunately, we could not get the integration to work with Opera and Firefox even though Orbit web site claims it will work. It only worked for us with Internet Explorer. We tested it with MSIE version 6.x.

We have used Grab++ in combination with wget to get flv files from a web site too.

YouTube Downloader (Free)

Much easier to use than orbit downloader in some ways. However, will not always download the YouTube video. Some videos are protected in a way that causes YouTube Downloader to fail. We tested YouTube downloader version 2.1.x

• YouTube Downloader - Free Software, No Spyware Detected

YouTube downloader does something that Orbit downloader will not do. It converts the Flash files into standard video media types like MPEG-4 avi. However, this requires the codec to be installed already on PC and process actually re-encoded video so some quality is lost. The only way to convert flv file to avi is to re-encode and thus quality is sacrificed.

Analog Hole

With a video capture card you can capture any video output being displayed on a PC. Video may be streamed using S-Video out on PC video card with that feature and captured with another device. Re-encoding and quality loss occurs. Process requires additional hardware. Process will capture ANY video that PC can play. Always works, but slow, complicated, and quality loss.

Q: I downloaded a flv file but it won't play. It seems to be complete, so how do I get it to play?

A: Adobe Flash Player (including sa_flashplayer_9_debug.exe) may refuse to play a flv file you've downloaded because the file owner/author has the file set as proprietary. This is done via file header flags, and other tricks, and is like a type of DRM. If you are sure the entire flv file is present (typically several MBs big) then VLC Player, a free video player application, can be used to play almost any flv file including those with flags set. There are other flv file players out there, some free, some pay. VLC Player plays flv files and many other media types including avi, mpeg, and audio files like mp3. VLC Player will not play swf files.

Q: I downloaded the video file that I found the name and path from the HTML source. Why won't it play my video?

A: The SWF file is probably a program that loads a separate video file. You need to "sniff" what the SWF file is telling the web browser to fetch and supply to the flash plugin. Grab++ is a free program that can listen in on what the browser is downloading and otherwise hiding from you. You will likely see a flv file being downloaded with the sniffer. Grab that.

Q: I downloaded the video file that I found the name and path from the HTML source. When I play it I see a video interface and a loading message but the video never plays. How do I get the video to play?

A: The SWF file is probably a program builds a pseudo custom video interface complete with a play, pause, and stop button. You still need to sniff the browser and find the real video file.