Sorry for the not-really-game-related question, but this is the only forum I spend significant time on, and I know there are a lot of savvy people here.

I am looking to save video from a specific site - http://liquidtelevision.com . I just recently discovered that they have streams of a lot of the great animation shorts I love, and I want to save these to my computer so that I can watch them from my NAS appliance (and also in case that site ever goes away).

So my question is, what is the best way to extract and save videos from this site? A solution that works on other/all sites is even better, because that could be of use to a lot of folks. But for the purpose of my question, your solution should work at the very least in this case.

Here is a target video that you can test your solution against:

http://liquidtelevision.com/video/the-specialists-1-of-11/

I have tried a number of Firefox video download plugins to no avail, so I'm hoping one of you can help.

Thanks!

Interesting solution. Most video sites simply link to a static generic player, and plug the video source in as an attribute, while this one seems to generate the player with the video source built-in (or rather, it passes some video ID to the player, which then asks the streaming server where to find it). As such, most sites have the url to the video file plainly visible in the HTML source, while this one doesn't - one has to read the Flash to find out where the video is.

Unfortunately, I have no solution for you, just wanted to offer my thoughts.

I don't think it's possible due to the way the videos are called and streamed - I've checked all my usual tricks and none of them works.

Video DownloadHelper is probably the very thing you're looking for. It's an add-on for Firefox that'll allow you to save pretty much any flash-based video. It'll also allow you to convert videos into other files if you want that.

Check out the example picture of a video I just "downloaded" from that site.

Edit: Never mind. It doesn't seem to work on that particular video player to which you linked. Hm.

Ach. I tried it before but couldn't get it to work. I was going to ask you how you did it, but seems like you didn't either. :(

Getting videos off of this website is a bit of a pain. As far as I can tell, the particular video which you have linked is stored on an MTV server and streamed using RTMP/RTMPE. To save the video you're going to need software which connects to the RTMP server and then saves the stream. However, I'm not sure doing this is legal since Adobe have claimed that this kind of software violates the DMCA.
Aside from this, your best option is probably to use some kind of screen capture software.

You could try using some program like FRAPS to record you watching the video in your browser (or fullscreen if you have the option to play them fullscreen). Kind of defeats the point in that you'd want to quickly download them store and save them, but at least this way you do get them, just that it takes as long to get them as it does to watch them.

The videos appear to be blocked here in the UK as all I get is a message saying they are not available in my region.

Try with Streaming Video Recorder and if it doesnt work(I'm sure it will) try with bandicam (you can catch the screen and record it)

RealDownloader was really good for downloading flash videos very quickly, but they have now discontinued that as a downloadable extra and fitted it into their highly unreliable (but still semi-functional) RealPlayer. You could give that a look.
I cannot use my version right now as I am on a different system entirely, but if you do decide to install it, be VERY careful of all their little "extras" and their small print.
They turned into RealUndesirables over the last year or so too.

EDIT:::
FRAPS can be used to download videos being watched. So I tried it on the music videos I could watch from that site and it worked, but I cannot watch the video you have pointed too.

Pyron's solution worked for me only after I chose to run rtmpsrv.exe (RTMP Server) instead of rtmpsuck.exe, as described on RTMPDumpHelper's site under "Using rtmpsrv.exe instead of rtmpsuck.exe".

I also downloaded the RTMPDump Toolkit version that contains the patch from GitHub, just to be on the safe side.

This way I managed to download the target video provided in .flv format - no idea why Pyron got a different video format.

So thanks to Pyron for providing a working solution.

If it's flash there are all kinds of apps for Firefox. I'm using Flash Video Downloader.

Perfect! This worked beautifully, Pyron, thank you so much! MP4 format is great for my purposes, it's what most of the video that I convert for NAS usage starts out as.

I've marked your answer as the solution. As additional thanks please select a GOG game as a reward.

Thanks as well to everyone who posted. I knew this community would deliver the goods! :D

I'm glad I could help. :)

Thank you for your generosity. PM sent.

Got it. I'll send the game code over once you unblock PM messages in return. Feel free to re-enable blocking after you get the game. :)

EDIT: And game code sent. Enjoy your well-earned reward!