aka video recording means keeping a local copy of
a video you can view online on the Internet. Often you need to download a video,
either to keep a copy in case the original is withdrawn, or to transcribe it.
Sometimes all you have to do is click a download
button. Usually those hosting the videos don’t want you to do that. They
are worried you will pirate the video, put it on your own website, and get the
associated advertising revenue instead of them, or look at it yourself over and
over without having to wade through the ads on the front. People hosting the
videos go out of their way to make it difficult for you to keep a copy.
How To Download
Use the free trial versions to give various hacking tools a crack at downloading
your video. They will have the best chance of success on the famous hosting
sites such as YouTube. There is no guarantee they will work in any given
situation. It is an escalating war game between hosters trying to stop you from
downloading and the crackers attempting to defeat their defences. Most tools
with only one with one or two formats of video stream. To confuse you, hosters
often lie about the type of stream they are feeding, for example they will claim
it is Flash when it is really Microsoft or claim it is Real Audio when it is
really Quicktime. Browsers automatically see through the lie by paying attention
to the MIME type the server sends.
Possible Video Formats
| Video Links Legend |
|---|
| streaming or downloadable |
|---|
| Click corresponding icon to download player. |
|---|
| Apple QuickTime |
 |
| BitTorrent |
 |
| DivX |
 |
| DVD |
 |
| Flash animations |
 |
| Google |
 |
| Microsoft Media Player |
 |
| Microsoft Power Point |
 |
| mpg |
 |
| mp3 |
 |
| mp4 |
 |
| Real Player |
 |
| VHS tape |
 |
| Shockwave |
 |
| transcript |
 |
| unknown |
 |
| You Tube |
 |
Manual Cracking Steps
If none of the commercial cracking tools you try work, you can attempt some
simple manual cracking on your own. It is not that difficult, but it is not
something for a novice. This essay is by no means a fool-proof recipe, just some
general hints on how to proceed. Your steps are:
- Find the true name of the actual video file you want to download.
- Convince the server you are an ordinary browser desiring to play the file online,
and download that file, usually in some special streaming protocol, not HTTP or
FTP e.g. using NetTransport
- Convert that file into the format you prefer, e.g. MP3, e.g with GoldWave.
- Feed that local copy into a player for viewing, e.g. with VideoLAN.
Browser View Source
View source the web page where the video image appears. Look for URLs that end
in .swf or other video extensions. Try playing them
directly. Your might be able to download such a file you find with :
java com.mindprod.filetransfer.Download -jar filetransfer.jar "http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/watch_v8-vfl49669.swf"
whatever.swf
download is part of the FileTransfer
package
Wireshark
Run Wireshark with capture filter tcp
port 80 and display filter of http.request.method == "GET".
Then let it watch you start up the video in your browser. Once it has started
playing, stop the Wireshark capture. This will give you a list of all the web
pages and files your browser downloaded. Some of them will be the videos you
want. Right click a candidate to see the details of the download request. Then
use the download utility, part of the FileTransfer
package to download them.
You may end up downloading a lot of frogs before you find your prince. Check the Mime
entry to find the likely file name extensions for the sort of file you are
looking for.
Russian Dolls
You may see .asf files being downloaded. These are
Microsoft playlists. They contain XML. Download them and look inside to find the
URLs of the actual video files. They will contain URLs of the form mms://video.cpac.ca/cpac/20/AR_CPAC3E6480.asf.
Unfortunately, the server likely won’t let you download them with ordinary
browser http protocol. You will need some special program, such as , NetTransport,
to speak the mms: protocol to the the server to download instead of play.
NetTransport can speak:
- HTTP / HTTPS
- FTP / through SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) / SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol)
- MMS (Microsoft Media Services)
- RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol)
- PNM (rename PNM to RTSP)
- BitTorrent
- eMule
- RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol)
Loopback Audio Recording
 |
| loopback mini audio stero plug |
Conceptually you could capture the audio-only from
a video, by playing the video in your browser and tape recording what comes out
the loudspeakers. Then you could play that back into the microphone to some
sound capture software like GoldWave.
You could do that more elegantly with a patchcord that loops the output of your
sound card back into the input port. Then you don’t need a tape recorder. You
record live.
You can do that even more elegantly (and with less static) by electronically
looping the internal digital output of your sound card back into the input using
a software utility.
2008-08-07 by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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