Can't Download? Just Load it!

Ever wanted to download a video or song from the internet?

Do you always have the rotten luck of finding the video but you cant download it (or have to pay), you can only watch it.

Well all is not lost my friend because this method has a very good success rate.

If you have Firefox then there is a way to get around this. (Plus a file unlocking program...a good one is Unlocker 1.8.5
[please assess safety level yourself and install at your own discretion, here is one review of this programs safety]

1. Open Firefox and clear PRIVATE DATA ( if not sure got to your 'Temp' folder and make sure it's empty.

2. Visit the website with the video you want. Watch it or just let it load to max.

3. Now visit the Temp folder again. There is now a very large -------.tmp file there! (increasing with quality and length of video, movies ca 300MB+)

4. In Firefox, Menu>Tools>Page Info. Here you will find Media tab. Scroll through until you find

'Embed'.

This will tell you what kind of player the website is using to play the movie. Once you know the player you know the file format!

If the site has a WMP then most likely the format is wmv if video or wma if audio. But most multi-media sites use flv or swf.

some most likely, under 'Embed', will say.......http://freeflashplayer.net/flvplayer.swf

This will mean it plays an swf or flv but most likely flv as it is the most popular format for online video

5. In the Temp Folder right click ------.tmp and select Unlocker.

A window will open. Go to bottom left corner and select Copy from the drop down menu. Save file where you like

Unlocker is used because windows does not allow manipulation of files in process

6. Go to where you saved the file. Now things get a bit iffy, so to avoid disaster make a 2nd copy of the tmp file for back up (i.e. copy2.tmp)


7. Change, edit, the extension of the copy.tmp to copy.flv

Play the file with you flv player!


try it with this any flash based video (youtube video are a good starting point...small file size to handle)

[you can now delete copy2.tmp....don't worry about the original tmp (------.tmp), it will be deleted when you navigate away from the web page, close Firefox or clear private data]