Download Flash videos #

(including those embedded in JW Player) with the Grab Any Media extension for Google Chrome. Installation and usage instructions. Piracy PSA.

UPDATE 1: Grab Any Media is now available for Firefox directly from Mozilla's Firefox Add-ons page.

Among other things, it can be used to grab an m3u8 link (GAM icon > Scanner > Scan > application/x-mpegURL) that can be fed to ffmpeg to download the video in mp4 format:
ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist file,http,https,tcp,tls,crypto -i "http://example.com/video.m3u8" -c copy video.mp4

Those who prefer a GUI can use VLC: File > Open Network... > paste m3u8 link into URL field > Stream output > Settings... > File > select destination filename > change "Encapsulation Method" from "MPEG TS" to "MPEG 4" > OK > Open.

ts files can be losslessly converted (i.e., re-muxed without transcoding) via ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i vlc-output.ts -acodec copy -vcodec copy out.mp4

UPDATE 2: Video DownloadHelper and JDownloader2 are another powerful pair; use the former to retrieve video URLs and paste them into the latter to download (attempting to download in Video DownloadHelper returns "Companion application required").

/misc | Jul 17, 2015


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