How to download streaming video from a flash player (arte)?

Question

there are a couple of concerts that I would very much like to view from Arte (I think it's a french TV channel?) but my connection is not good enough to stream the video. How can I download the file to play it locally?

Here is an example link:
http://www.my-jazzlive.tv/?p=1862

I have tried popular browser plugins such as DownloadHelper and Flash Video Downloader, these are working fine for me on sites such as youtube but they don't seem to recognise any stream from the Arte video player.

I also looked through /tmp for something that looks like a partially downloaded video, but no luck.

Solution 1

I've extracted the link for you, but beware that it is a huge file (790mb)! It will take some time to download. I did it a while ago, but it was not easily repeatable for other sites so I'll just give you the link here. (Even though flashgot did NOT work this time, it does often work for downloading flash videos, so that's quite a good firefox add on to use in general.)

How I did it in this case (may NOT work for other flash streams): You need to have the noscript addon for firefox installed for the following to work:

• With no script blocking all js and flash (as default for unvisited sites), go to the site- e.g. http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Gonzalo_Bergara_Quartet_Festival_Django_Reihnardt/
• Now mouse over the blocked flash plugin, which gives away the server they are using, which is download.liveweb.arte.tv in this case
• With this knowledge, go to google and do site:download.liveweb.arte.tv jazz or another search term.
• Then when you find the link you want, go to the google cache page instead of the actual live page.
• Then, make sure arte.tv and googleusercontent are allowed in the drop down noscript menu, but everything else is blocked, and you should be able to mouse hover over the disabled video plugin and copy the link.

Results may vary for different videos from the same page (http://www.my-jazzlive.tv for example). But is possible that when reaching the cache page, more usual ways of downloading may become available, like Flashgot: so keep an eye on Flashgot Media button!

Whether this will work for other sites is anyone's guess!

Solution 2

The link you gave as an example is not from arte-tv, nor arte live web but from http://www.my-jazzlive.tv, which may contain files that are not any more on arte live web despite the logo on the image. Part of the clips from the http://www.my-jazzlive.tv are present for some time on arte live web, so this might count as a solution (but not anymore for the specific link posted in your question):

There is a GUI, now called Qarte which comes in a long series of similar apps that did the trick but became obsolete in time

I have created a general question+answer for that, here.

Comments

[RobotHumans]

the "popular" ones mostly just scrape the browser for the url and use rtmpdump code written by someone else or watch temp directories for files with flv headers

[ish]

A general solution for all streams on the arte website would require some scripting to get the RTMP url and download it. Maybe offer a bounty? ;)

[RobotHumans]

@izx i've long thought there should be a script that is essentially an rtmp port watcher for redirect-sockets that moves the request from a web browser to rtmp-dump. not a portable solution, but a great solution

[wim]

thanks .. i'm downloading it now! how do you scrape the link? i checked in the 'view source' and can't see it anywhere there.. and i have other concerts i'm interested to watch too

[wim]

thanks for the info .. i'll try it out. by the way, the link in your answer was actually for a different concert (it seem to be my-jazzlive.tv/?p=1872 where i was looking at my-jazzlive.tv/?p=1862)

[Admin]

Yes, I'll try to replace it with the other link.

[Admin]

However, I think it is only possible to find some of the concerts. Here is another that is available: arte.vo.llnwd.net/pd1/liveweb/stream/…

[wim]

thanks, i am finding the step in bullet point 3 is flakey .. it is non-trivial to find the link this way. is there a way to extract it from the original page element?

[Admin]

No I don't think so- I've done all I can- perhaps someone can write a script?

[Admin]

@Mik - could you please add more details on the third and fourth step? download.liveweb.arte.tv is easy to see with noscript, but the following steps (google site:download.liveweb.arte.tv etc), finding the link and going to cache are obscure to me. Some graphic or more detailed instructions would be greatly appreciated by all i think

[Admin]

@cipricus Thanks for adding more info and the screenshot- that's just what the post needed- I didn't have time to do it earlier in the day. Thanks again.