Web: Download media files that were loaded by Flash
Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:42 pm
[PROBLEM]
It's becoming quite popular on the web to "pseudo-stream" audio/video using Flash, but sometimes even a Creative Commons licensed song can't be downloaded because of this - only listened to.
Very often the creators of such sites don't even know that they're causing harm on bandwidth and unfortunatley limiting the number of fans of the work of these artist - they simply think it's convenient (but it's not. it's flash).
Now I'll tell you how you could download these media to safe bandwidth and help others to get to know these artists, too!
1) Use Mozilla Firefox (v1 or 2 doesn't matter) and browse to the particular site.
2) Let the flash player load the file.
3) open another tab and type "about:cache" in the address bar.
You will get the choice for listing Memory cache and Disk cache. Choose the disk cache, since media files are more likely to be there.
4) Now you'll get a looooong list of all the files your Firefox has cached so far. Search for something that could be in the filename/URL of what you've just loaded in the Flash player (e.g. Artist's name, song name, ".ogg", ".mp3", ...)
You'll see an entry like this:
6) Now you'll see something like this:
a) Use the cache:
You see an entry saying:
"file on disk: /home/user/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/sf5asfiu.default/Cache/FEAD55B9d01".
that's your media file. Just copy and rename it to whatever it should be. In our example that would be "xbloome-planet_q.mp3".
b) Download it again:
Try to open (or right-click and "save the target as") the "Key:" link at the top of the cache information.
Done.
Note: Of course, this should only be used to download material which is intended to be downloaded. But since all really great artist of course want their work to be distributed, they should have published it using a CC license or similar. If they haven't, you probably should listen to /watch someone else.
It's becoming quite popular on the web to "pseudo-stream" audio/video using Flash, but sometimes even a Creative Commons licensed song can't be downloaded because of this - only listened to.
Very often the creators of such sites don't even know that they're causing harm on bandwidth and unfortunatley limiting the number of fans of the work of these artist - they simply think it's convenient (but it's not. it's flash).
Now I'll tell you how you could download these media to safe bandwidth and help others to get to know these artists, too!
1) Use Mozilla Firefox (v1 or 2 doesn't matter) and browse to the particular site.
2) Let the flash player load the file.
3) open another tab and type "about:cache" in the address bar.
You will get the choice for listing Memory cache and Disk cache. Choose the disk cache, since media files are more likely to be there.
4) Now you'll get a looooong list of all the files your Firefox has cached so far. Search for something that could be in the filename/URL of what you've just loaded in the Flash player (e.g. Artist's name, song name, ".ogg", ".mp3", ...)
You'll see an entry like this:
5) Follow the "Key:" link by clicking on it.Key: http://www.soundfoundation.de/downloadT ... 3141518885
Data size: 5986304 bytes
Fetch count: 1
Last modified: 2007-07-19 14:38:43
Expires: 1970-01-01 01:00:00
6) Now you'll see something like this:
7) Now you have 2 options: Copy the file from the cache or download it again.key: http://www.soundfoundation.de/downloadT ... 3141518885
fetch count:
2
last fetched:
2007-07-19 14:39:47
last modified:
2007-07-19 14:38:43
expires:
1970-01-01 01:00:00
Data size:
5986304
file on disk:
/home/user/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/sf5asfiu.default/Cache/FEAD55B9d01
Security:
This document does not have any security info associated with it.
Client:
HTTP
request-method:
GET
response-head:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:38:30 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.36 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.15 mod_perl/1.29
content-disposition: attachment; filename=10_XBloome_Planet_Q.mp3
Content-Length: 5986304
Content-Type: audio/mpeg
a) Use the cache:
You see an entry saying:
"file on disk: /home/user/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/sf5asfiu.default/Cache/FEAD55B9d01".
that's your media file. Just copy and rename it to whatever it should be. In our example that would be "xbloome-planet_q.mp3".
b) Download it again:
Try to open (or right-click and "save the target as") the "Key:" link at the top of the cache information.
Done.Note: Of course, this should only be used to download material which is intended to be downloaded. But since all really great artist of course want their work to be distributed, they should have published it using a CC license or similar. If they haven't, you probably should listen to /watch someone else.