Chances are, you’ve seen a video online (maybe on YouTube) that you wanted to download. You probably tried to download the Flash file that the EMBED or OBJECT element referenced, either by using Firefox DOM Inspector, Firefox Page Info, or just by looking through the source code (I know a guy who thinks he’s really l33t because he looks through the source and never uses DOM Inspector… he’s not l33t). If it’s like most videos nowadays, though, you probably got a very small .swf file (<1MiB) that didn’t play the video. As you may have figured out, the .swf file is actually not the video; it’s a simple media player that plays .flv files. While some web sites make it relatively easy to find the URL of the .flv file (it often shows up in DOM Inspector; look at the flashvars attribute of the EMBED element), many more cleverly-designed sites do not have the URL in plain sight (try YouTube). In addition, even if you know the URL, you may run into problems caused by the Referer header (which lets the site know whether you accessed the file normally through a web page or just copied the URL into your address bar).

If you search Google, you’ll likely find countless web sites that advertise direct download from major video sites. Even if those sites work (many don’t), that’s the catch: MAJOR video sites, i.e. the ones that the download sites hardcoded into the system, are the only ones that work. You’d think there would be an easier way.

Well, there is. And it’s as simple as visiting the web site and watching the video in Internet Explorer. Simply watch the video in its entirety, and then go check out your Temporary Internet Files folder. Just about always, the video lies there. You may want to clear the Temporary Internet Files folder before doing this, so that you don’t have to look through the entire folder (seeing as the filename is not always obvious).

Many sites will make it incredibly easy to find the file, because it has a .flv extension. Other sites, like YouTube, are slightly smarter; they don’t put an extension on the file. But the YouTube videos’ filenames always start with “get_video?video_id=”. When in doubt, just look for a huge file (.flv videos are usually at least several MiB; if you cleared the Temporary Internet Files before doing this, you shouldn’t have any other large files), and rename it to .flv. Try playing it with your favorite FLV player, and you will likely have success.

Disclaimer: this information is purely for educational purposes, and I do not condone any illegal use of this method (although I can’t think of any illegal ways to use it).

This article is Copyright 2008 Jeremy F. Rand, AKA Biolizard89. All rights not strictly covered under Fair Use are reserved. If you don’t know what Fair Use covers, go read about it. Please note that the RIAA, the MPAA, and piracy web sites are unlikely to provide you with accurate information on Fair Use.