Pulling a flash movie from a website?

N

NeedinHelp001

Registered
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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=263597&page=2. 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/").
 
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.
 
sinclair_tm said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
I just took another crack at it, and I figured out a way to download it so you can play it in Safari from your HD. Just download these four files, put them in the same folder, and open the "htm" file in Safari.

http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7anime_vid.htm
http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7anime_vid.swf
http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7anime_vid.flv
http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/SteelExternalAll.swf

I'm not entirely sure where the "SteelExternalAll" bit comes from, or if you can rely on it to work on other sites of that type. All I know is that if you leave that file out, you'll get the video, but no controls.
 
(maintains that site)

You could've just asked me how to download my Flash vids instead of going through all that trouble. ^^; But are you sure you want it? My highly compressed Flash vids are mainly for people who can't download from torrents and/or are impatient. The original, high quality version can be downloaded from animesuki.com
 
Mikuro said:
I just took another crack at it, and I figured out a way to download it so you can play it in Safari from your HD. Just download these four files, put them in the same folder, and open the "htm" file in Safari.

http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7anime_vid.htm
http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7anime_vid.swf
http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7anime_vid.flv
http://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/SteelExternalAll.swf

I'm not entirely sure where the "SteelExternalAll" bit comes from, or if you can rely on it to work on other sites of that type. All I know is that if you leave that file out, you'll get the video, but no controls.
Click to expand...

steelexternalall refers to the template of video controls flash uses when you add video.
 
i know i could get a better quaity copy elsewhere, but i just wanted to see it at least once, and my time on the internet with my own computer is short, so i wanted to just save it for later, when i had no connection to surf and was just stareing at the screen. so this flash version was just fine for me.
fantasyanime_gu (maintains that site)
Click to expand...
thx for hosting it.
 
Or, if you have the codes, you can use an ftp client to grab the swf file. If you want to edit it and don't have the original .fla file (flash) you can use a program called Gordon http://futurecandy.com to extract the layers and edit the file.
 
Also try KeepVid (http://keepvid.com/). Paste the URL of the page with the movie and you get the option to save the file as an avi, or as an mpeg for your iPod or PSP. Doesn't work for all sites but easy, free and worth a try ;)
 
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