Free YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool

Click here for the “YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool”

youtube-video-downloader-path-to-flv-finder-tool

Click here for the “YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool”

This is a follow up article on my previous post “How to get the direct url path to .flv video files on YouTube for Free” it’s a collection of php scripts mashed together from around the web. It will enable a user to fetch the actual .flv path url to a YouTube video.

If anyone is interested in the code leave a comment request and I will contact you.

Hope this helps you!

ps: I decided to run Google Adsense on the tool page as a lot of time is spent on building and sourcing the code…

How to get the direct url path to .flv video files on YouTube for Free

Youtube Logo.jpg

I had reason this week to try and find the actual direct path to an.flv on YouTube, I was trying out the excellent JW Media Player by Jeroen Wijering it supports playback of flv files among a host of other formats heres a quick excerpt from his website.

“JW Media Player supports playback of a single media file of any format the Flash Player can handle (MP3, FLV, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF). It also supports RSS, XSPF and ATOM playlist (with mixed mediatypes and advertisement possibilities), a wide range of flashvars (settings) for tweaking both behavior and appearance and an extensive, documented javascript/actionscript API.”

The Problem?

While coding the xml playlist file for the player I tried adding a YouTube video but couldn’t find the actual path to the .flv file on YouTube’s servers. YouTube dont allow downloading of the video files and they have the path to the files pretty well hidden. So with a little tinkering around I came up with this trick…

The Solution!

I used this website www.keepvid.com to decode the url from YouTube. First go to YouTube and load a video, copy the url in the address bar it should show something like this:

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=TvedUxLtZKQ

Now go to the www.keepvid.com website and paste the url into the box provided, select Youtube from the drop down options and then click the Download button.
You can download the file direct but in this case I only need the path to the flv file so just under the url input box there will appear a Download box like the image below.

Right click on the >>Download Link << and select “Copy Link Location” (Firefox) or “Copy Shortcut” (Internet Explorer)

KeepVid

Now paste the result into notepad or directly to your xml file it will show like this:

http://chi-v48.chi.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=TvedUxLtZKQ

One thing left to do, add .flv to the end of the url so it ends up like this:

http://chi-v48.chi.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=TvedUxLtZKQ.flv

That’s it, the final url path to your YouTube video.

I know that this tip breaches the YouTube terms and conditions as using a third party player to stream the flv is therefore stealing their bandwidth and not allowing them to run any advertising on the video page, but hey! rules are sometimes broken and this tip is for purely experimental purposes! 😉

Time Saver Tip…

KeepVid provide a handy link to drag to your links toolbar it’s a great time saver if you intend on getting paths to video files or just to download videos files direct for free. I have it here for you, simply drag the button below to your Links Toolbar and when you are viewing a video on any website just hit the link on you toolbar and it redirects you to their website with the video ready for download or just to get the path.

Keep It!

Hope this helps you…..

How to download and save Bebo video files – the easy way.

How To Download And Save Bebo Video Files The Easy Way.

How to download and save Bebo video files - the easy way.

I was asked by my friend Shane Supple if it was possible to download a video that was uploaded to Bebo.com.

It is not as straight forward as you may think, having tinkering around with source code etc. I discovered that when you upload a video to Bebo you are actually storing your file on www.videoegg.com so I took the embed source code that Bebo provide which reveals the first part of this tip.

Go to a  page that displays a bebo video, you will know it is a bebo video because their logo is embedded as a watermark over the video then scroll down till you see the “Embed” part of the page.

Example:

download or save Bebo video files - the easy way

 

Copy the embed code and paste it into Notepad, it will show something like this:

<embed width=”425″ height=”350″ src=”http://static.videoegg.com/videoegg/loader.swf” FlashVars=”bgColor=FFFFFF
&file=http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC
&autoPlay=false
&forcePlay=false&logo=&allowFullscreen=true” quality=”high” allowScriptAccess=”always” bgcolor=”#FFFFFF” scale=”noscale”wmode=”window” name=”VE_Player” align=”middle” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” /><br><a href=”http://bebo.com/watchtv”>Watch More Videos</a> Uploaded by <a href=”http://bebo.com/watchuser/436885205″>www.bebo.com/De-baw</a>

All you are interested here is the part:

http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC

To download and save that file you need to put _high.flv to the end of the URL string in order to download that file in .flv format.

So the new URL would be:
http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC_high.flv

Type or copy/paste this URL into a browser window and you will be prompted to download the .flv file

Try it here: http://download.videoegg.com/gid329/cid1124/E7/7N/1175278125C1Zp0f2MW8
zokcDy8sWC_high.flv

How to play an .flv file

You need to download a FLV Player to play back the .flv file. There are many free flv players available on the internet I use Wimpy FLV Player. No installation needed as its a stand alone player and it also supports drag and drop. It is available for both Mac and Windows.

Download it here: http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_standalone_flv_player.html

There is probably lots of software and tricks to download video from Bebo but I think this is the quickest way around it. Hope this helps you…

Faster SkreemR Audio Search Add-on for Firefox (auto-suggest feature)

SkreemRUpdate 3rd Dec 07: James over at SkreemR has officially added my Firefox plugin to their 3rd party plugins “Tools” page view the page here

I coded this firefox add-on to query the SkreemR mp3 search site much quicker than the standard search tool add-on.

SkreemR currently provide a useful search add-on, it installs SkreemR search to your current list of search engines within Firefox. By searching for an artist or song you are directed to the SkreemR website and results are displayed.

I re-coded their XML install file to include a live suggest feature pulling related words as you type from Yahoo to speed up your search query.

Examples:

 

1. The below image shows the default SkreemR add-on, you have to type in the artist and song title and then click on the magnify button to complete a search:

skreemr-without-auto-suggest-feature.gif

2. And here is my improved version in action, as you type you will be prompted with relevant words speeding up your search, no need to click on magnify button. Just type, select, go.

skreemr-with-auto-suggest-feature.gif

 

Try It Out:

If you haven’t installed the SkreemR search add-on for Firefox please try my version:

Firefox SkreemR Search Add-on Auto Suggest“Click here to install Firefox auto suggest search add-on”

 

How to uninstall:

To uninstall the add-on just select “Manage Search Engines” from your drop down list then select and remove it.

Hope it improves your search speed on SkreemR

Note: This add-on will install to “Microsoft Internet Explorer” browser but the auto suggest feature is disabled.

If your interested in the code?

To view the source of the xml install file click here

What is SkreemR ?

SkreemR is a search engine for locating audio files on the web.
Some quotes about it:

“Music search engine SkreemR turns up a nice selection of MP3 files from all over the web…” – lifehacker.com

“If you are looking for a great mp3 search engine you should head over to Skreemr immediately.” – gHacks.net

How to Grab a Thumbnail Screenshot Of Any Website

An easy tutorial on how to grab a thumbnail image screen shot of any website. This is an easy way for webmasters to grab a screen shot of their own websites to include them in their portfolio pages, clients websites or just storing the images for later use.

We will use Snap Shots cached thumbnails to retrieve a web page screen shot. You can grab a small 270 x 173 pixel image or a large 427 x 274 pixel image of your website here is do it how to:

In your html page just call the image from within the <img> tag like so:

<img src=”http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com&size=small” />

snap shot small

or if you want the larger size type:

<img src=”http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com&size=large” />

snap shot big

 

Make it appear in the browser:

http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com

Type the above url into you browser address bar to get the image. By default the small 270 x 173 px appears if you want the large version 427 x 274 px just append &size=large to the url like so:

http://shots.snap.com/preview/?url=http://www.kmcgraphics.com&size=large

Dont forget to change the url http://www.kmcgraphics.com in my example to the website domain you want to grab.

Give it a go right here:

Type in your domain name and select small or large then submit.

Small Large

I cannot see my website screen shot why?

The Snap Shots website bot has not yet visited your website, it will not have a cached screenshot of your website therefore you will see this image:

snap preview

If this happens just leave it there on screen for a minute so that the Snap Shots website has time to visit the url and take a screen shot.

Just refresh your page again after 1 minute and the image should appear, if not try again after few minutes.

Please do not hotlink to the image on the Snap Shots website just wait for it to load in your browser and then select save image as, also by default the image will be named”preview.jpg” change this to your liking. Thats it…..