How I Download Flash Videos

Here's how I download Flash video. I'll use YouTube as an example, but I've found that the method works on other flash video, but not by any means all online video.

1. Start playing the movie in Safari.
2. Open the Activity Window in Safari. It's under the Window menu.
3. Find the movie in the Activity window. The Activity window lists a lot of things, like all the graphics on the webpage (and for all open pages.) But I usually find movies because they are the largest--in the MB's not KB's. Also the movies size is usually changing--as long as the movie is downloading.

In the image below, the movie is the file 3rd item from the bottom whose name starts with v6.cache.googlevideo.


4. Select the movie file in the activity window and copy it. This will copy the location of the video.

5. Open a new browser window and paste the movie's location in the address field.

6. Safari starts downloading the video. Download window should automatically open.

7. Wait for the video to finish downloading. Then find the video file. The magnifying glass next to the file in the Download window will take you to it. In OS.10.4 it's probably on the desktop. In OS 10.5, it's probably in the Downloads folder.

8. Rename the file to add the .flv suffix if it doesn't already have the .flv suffix, e.g., get_video.flv. You might as well add a descriptive title too while you are at it.

Now to work with flash video on the Mac, I use the free Perian plug-in. It lets QuickTime recognize the file, so that you can use it in Final Cut Pro or any app that uses QuickTime.

YouTube now has better quality video available on some videos. Check to see if the video you want is in better quality before downloading. If there is higher quality video, then you'll see the link below the movie "watch in high quality."


Click on that link and then follow the instructions above to get a much better looking video from YouTube.

Earlier this summer I posted a link to a post from Final Cut User that recommends transcoding the flash to something that FCP is used to working with, like the DV codec. I haven't had any problems working with Flash video, but it could speed up your workflow if you don't have to render the movies in the timeline.

My 2¢ on the Consumer Experience--HDTV, Apple TV, iPhone

Executive Summary of My 2¢: HDTV is great, but there are too many gatekeepers and technology hurdles--the hottest distribution platform in the future could be mobile video. (This post ended up being much longer than I thought it would be.)

HDTV
So I bought a high-def TV on Friday. I didn't want a big set that would dominate my studio apartment or cover up windows. So I decided on a 32" set, which is still larger than the 27" set that it is replacing. But once I got to the store and stood back about 8 feet, I was having a hard time distinguishing the advantage of high-def. They have these videos at Best Buy that do a split screen of high-def and a simulated standard-def. Well at 32" and 8 feet, the advantages weren't that great. (I wrote recently about some equations for how screen size and viewing distance effect perceived resolution.) I went with a $900 Sony KDL-32s3000 because it was the set that I could perceive the most difference in high-def that was under a 1K. I found that basic 32" sets weren't as sharp as the more pricey Sony. I wanted to feel like I wasn't just getting a slightly larger, brighter set.

I've watch a decent amount of video so far, and I'm happy with the set. I watched a couple of DVD's and they looked good. The DVD's look much larger because 1/4 of the screen isn't lost to letterboxing as was the case with my old 4:3 tube TV. Road to Perdition was on ABC last night, and it was nice to see a movie in HD. Although sitting through commercials to watch a movie is a hassle, and I don't plan on watching movies this way. PBS had a travel show on Italy, and I was totally absorbed by the Italian coastline in HD.

Old analog TV looks like crap on an HDTV. I used to record a fair amount of TV on a DVD recorder that only had an analog over-the-air tuner. Well when I hooked this recorder up to the HDTV and tried to watch some TV that I recorded, I decided I couldn't watch TV like that. The artifacts from analog TV, like ghosting of the image and noise, look just awful on a high-def display. So I replaced my old DVD recorder with a newer model with digital TV antenna. So far, the clean recordings that I get from the new DVD recorder, a Panasonic DMR-EZ27 look good even though they are standard-def recordings only. The difference in recording a digital standard-def signal is significantly better than an analog TV signal.

So I think I have dissed digital OTA (over the air) TV before. I had an experience a few years ago where I bought a digital tuner and found that I could not get channels reliably. Well my experience this time around has been very good. The digital reception is much better now than my analog reception was. Even my old rabbit-ears antenna works fine.

Apple TV
I have been thinking about getting an Apple TV after plugging it so much. But when it came down to it, I didn't think it was yet worth the $225 price. While it would be great to rent HD movies, there's not that much selection yet. There are almost 100 movies in HD, but it looks like Apple is having a harder time getting movies than they expected. They had promised 1,000 standard-def rental by the end of February. Instead, they had only around 350. It makes me worried that the studios are going to dick around with Apple because they don't want to see Apple TV succeed like the iPod did and become a dominant media platform. Not good news for the Apple TV when they can't even meet their targets for content.

I did go check out the Apple TV at the Apple Store. I thought the HD movie clips looked good although everyone says that Blu-ray leaves it in the dust on a large set. The podcast interface was cool. With the 2.0 software on Apple TV, you don't need to use your computer to download podcasts before watching. You can browse and search podcasts right on your TV, and if their server is fast enough, start watching them immediately. I think it's a pretty good model for media distribution. Unfortunately, until these media extender boxes take off, then there's just not that many boxes out there that will play video podcasts on the TV.

I was able to easily search for our show Mosaic and play it on the Apple TV. Unfortunately, 320x240 looks just awful on an HDTV. Apple has been recommending video podcasts be 640x480 or 640x360 in order to look good on an HDTV. That's about 4 times as many pixels, so much more data to serve/download. But there's something to the idea that you have 1,000's of different podcasts that you can access instantly on your TV set and it is not controlled by gatekeepers like Comcast or AT&T. (Check out this blog post "7 Ways Apple TV Changes The Game And What Podcasters Need To Know And Do About It" for some interesting thoughts on Apple TV and podcasting.)

So when it came down to shelling out $225 for the chance to rent HD movies with Apple TV, it wasn't worth it, even for an Apple fan boy like me. I'm also not ready to spend $400 for a Blu-ray player/PlayStation 3 to watch Blu-ray movies. For the time, I think DVD's look good enough on my set. If the selection takes off on the Apple TV, I'll reconsider.

iPhone
So after buying an HDTV set, I've decided that the real action is on the small-screen. This week was a big week for the iPhone with the announcement of a software developer kit. That means all kinds of third-party applications are going to start appearing for the iPhone. Apple showed off an instant messaging app for AOL. I was skeptical that they would allow IM because that seems like competition for the SMS messaging that AT&T still charges for. I think Apple is really going to open up phones as a great mobile computing platform.

This past week, BBC came out with an iPlayer site that has BBC videos in h.264 Quicktime for the iPhone. Recently it's come out that there's no real chance for Flash on the iPhone--Apple says that the iPhone doesn't have enough computing power to run Flash. Since most sites are encoding videos in Flash, that leaves a pretty big hole for streaming video to the iPhone. BBC decided to start encoding h.264 video just for the iPhone. (YouTube has been doing some h.264 encoding too since the iPhone launch.) BBC's iPlayer is basically a website with a simplified interface that works well on the iPhone's small screen. It only works over WiFi now--the Edge data network is too slow to stream video, but maybe when the iPhone gets on 3G networks streaming video will be better. Oh, no BBC for you--it only works in the United Kingdom. But I think it's interesting to think about mobile distribution of video. Our Mosaic Intelligence Report and Global Pulse would be great for mobile video.

In short my thoughts at the moment are that HDTV is great, but there are too many gatekeepers and technology hurdles--the hottest distribution platform in the future will be mobile video. I think Apple is still playing a positive role for consumers in opening access to content on both the mobile end and on the TV. Maybe I'm too optimistic about mobile--the telco's also control the mobile network and I can't see them being excited about their mobile networks being filled with free videos.

MPEG Streamclip Review

Here's a gushing review of the free MPEG Streamclip. I haven't used MPEG Streamclip in a while. This article recommends it for converting DVD's to DV but I never got that to work with interlaced footage. Maybe I should try again with the newest version. Mentions that it does a good job transcoding Flash videos and also includes some iPod presets for h.264 encoding. The article talks about how to edit with MPEG Streamclip. I also wrote about this a while back in this post.

UPDATE: A second post goes into a lot of basic how-to's for all kind of copying and trans-codings for DVD's and Flash movies. Includes a "Mac All-Star Video Software Links".

TubeTV--Save and Convert Online Flash Movies

This looks like a handy app. It is is for downloading and converting videos from YouTube and Google Video. Has a built-in little browser where you search and navigate to the movies that you want. It will handle conversion to H.264 for your Apple TV or iPod. It says that Macs need the Perian Quicktime Component to watch FLV movies in QuickTime.

I've written about keepvid.com before here. It's a website that helps with downloading flash fiiles from a bunch of websites.

Al Jazeera English goes YouTube

After getting shutout of US broadcasting, Al Jazeera English has launched a channel of sorts on YouTube.

I haven't watched Al Jazeera English, and the big question is if it will become as notorious as the original Arabic channel. I'm guessing not, but I think it is still worth keeping an eye on what they are doing. Especially considering the sorry state of news channels in the US.

[via TV Squad]