I pit Flash videos. Youtube, Metube, HeSheIttube, whatever

The BBQ Pit
1

Bloody Hell!!! kicks computer screen, throws mouse out the window

Does this ^!@E%&# video format have any purpose in life other than to present videos while preventing folks from downloading their own local copies?

I want my own local copies. I’m not going to do anything perverted or unethical with them, but if I see a video I like I do not want to be dependent on being connected to the internet with a high bandwidth connection whenever I want to watch; I do not want to be dependent on the source web site still being up and the video still available at the same URL when I want to show it to someone years later, either.

No big deal. I’m not the only one who wants local copies regardless of the preferences of YouTube and every-bloody-bodyelse who provides their goddam videos as flash videos. So pretty much right from the start there have been techniques for snagging and downloading a local copy, including many that worked on my Mac…

• Oh yeah, no problem, just open the URL in Safari and open the Activity window and find the big file ending in “.flv” and do a FIND in the Mac Finder for that file. Remove it from that cache folder and you’re good to go! That worked for awhile then Flash changed or Safari changed or the sun got sunspots and that technique no longer worked.

• Oh, well you can go to this wonderfulcool web site “KeepVid” and paste in the URL to any YouTube video and click the “process” button and the web site will provide you with a clickable download link and you can download the video! Only worth a damn for YouTube, not for the oodles of other flash-using web sites, but yeah whatever, still useful. Until it wasn’t. Because Flash changed or YouTube changed and the KeepVid web site ceased to be able to snag the video and supply a download URL.

• Well, you can install RealPlayer which comes with RealPlayer Downloader which will auto-launch and keep track of all the flash videos you’ve encountered and you can bring RealPlayer Downloader to the foreground and download your own copy of any of those videos. Until Flash did one of its once-a-week ^$@@#@&& upgrades which broke RealPlayer Downloader so it didn’t work any longer.

• Well you can install this here plug-in and that installs an extra menu or popup in your web browser that says “Download” and you just click that and it downloads your video. Cool, huh? iSkySoft Free Video downloader! Until either Flash or iSkySoft did one of their once-a-week ^@#!#@# upgrades which caused the saved videos to turn up in some useless weirdass .MP4 format instead of .flv format

• Or you can download one of the many wonderful standalone applications that let you just drag the URL from Safari or copy and paste it in and it will cleverly download your video for you. Jaksta. Wondershare Video Converter. Just pay your shareware fee and your’e good to go! Until ^$@#@@# Flash gets updated again and it stops working and shows and error message about being unable to get the video.
Bloody fucking hell. Are any of these Flash video updates taking place for any reason other than trying to outrun all the utilities and strategies for saving a flash video to one’s hard drive?

I wish to hell someone would make a QUICKTIME plugin that would cause the damn flash videos to show up on my web browser screen as QUICKTIME elements (the same way Flip4Mac makes embedded .wmv videos play onscreen as QuickTime). I have the QuickTime Pro and can download QuickTime-style videos directly from any web page and that’s what I want to play them in once I’ve got them. Ability to select part of the video and copy and paste, ability to rotate the video, and so on.

2

It’s an arms race. None of the video sites WANT you to be able to download a local copy, or else they’d make it easy for you to do so. They don’t WANT you to be able to access the video without having to go to their website, because their revenue flow depends on getting eyes to look at the ads there. If people can easily download the videos to their own computer, then eventually they lose a lot of eyes, which means they lose a lot of revenue.

3

I just tested keepvid.com (my go-to site for this kind of thing) and it still works fine for me. Try using another browser, as your Java versions might be out of sync with what keepvid wants. Chrome, for instance, is 32-bit only and provides its own version of java, and I get error messages from time to time on java-heavy sites. Safari might be a better option for this, as Apple keeps Java fairly up-to-date all on its own through system updates.

Another possibility is that you accidentally clicked “block” or “don’t allow” when the java applet popped up and asked for permission, which renders keepvid totally inoperable. Figuring out how to undo that in your browser of choice or switching browsers will clear that problem right up.

Hope this helps!

4

Incidentally, while I’m not sure what kind of mp4 you’re getting from your plug-ins, I find mp4s to generally be superior to flash in many ways. They’re certainly more compatible with viewing/editing programs, and they’re easier to transcode. Making a DVD (which requires an mp2 file) is easier with mp4s than flash, for instance.

Of course, if you just want to watch 'em later, any file that plays is as good as any other! :smiley:

5

OP is complaining about mp4s in 2012. Dunno what to say to that. I’ve been using downloadhelper for years to download all sorts of vids, no problems.

6

I hate these things too. If its free for me to play a million times on the computer, I should be able to download and save them.

7

Um…no. That’s pretty much exactly what it’s for. This is like pitting the deer for running away while you’re trying to shoot it.

8

But if I could download the deer, I could pause it and get a better shot!

9

How does “should” enter into it? Anyway it’s not free: you’re paying for it with your eyeballs. If they get to serve you an ad when you watch it, then their advertisers pay them the money to host the video. They only can keep the service going by serving ads. If everyone DLs the videos, their business model doesn’t work, and then nobody can download or even watch the videos. Kantian imperative for the lose.

10

The internet doesn’t owe you shit.

11

Likewise if no viewer were impelled to purchase the good or service offered by advertisers. Is there an ethical obligation to purchase such goods or services?

12

Hurrrrrrr, I don’t know what I’m talking about!

Mommy won’t let you have her credit card, and you can’t save your wank videos off red tube? You poor thing.

13

Preach it, brother!

“Yeah, I know someone has spent millions providing me free entertainment from every corner of the the world but, god damnit, I demand it be more free!”

.

14

Firefox. Install Downloadhelper add-on. Totally free.

15

This part just confounds me. Why are MP4s useless? You can toss them on just about any damn thing and it’ll play them. Hell they’re often one of your only options for certain devices, mobile ones especially. If anything it’s those damn flv files that are useless.

16

I don’t find ALL .mp4 files useless. Just the ones produced since last upgrade by iSkysoft Free Video Downloader. Before, it produced .flv files I could play in QuickTime player. Afterwards, it produces .mp4 files which just so happen to be unplayable — either they are damaged or they require some misbegotten codec that I don’t have.

If they were .mp4 files that played like other .mp4 files I have (and have no issue with), that would be fine.

17

I assumed that it helps conserve bandwidth because users don’t have to actually download every video they want to watch. No?

18

Don’t think that’s the case. Assuming you watch the whole thing, the entire file has to be downloaded either way whether it’s downloaded completely first or viewed while it’s streaming/buffering. In fact, the streamed version could require more bandwidth for repeated viewings, if it has to download again each time rather than playing a cached copy (which I think is the case with YouTube).

If bandwidth is conserved, it’s because videos uploaded for streaming are converted/downsampled to reduce file size — or because YouTube viewers are more likely to quit watching before reaching the end.

19

Use VLC. Hands down the best video player on the planet.

20

Can’t select part of a video, copy it, paste it to a new video. Can’t add to selection and scale, multiple video and audio layers with options of blending. Can’t really do a damn thing except playback and you can’t even make it loop.