This is a tricky one; videos on web sites are often jury-rigged to make downloading very difficult. It’s possible in most cases, but it takes a few steps.
The first thing you need to do is get the full URL of the video clip. If the video is playing in a standalone Windows Media Player (or RealPlayer) window, it’s easy enough: select File Properties (in RealPlayer, select File Clip Properties View Clip Info), and look at the Location field.
If the video is embedded in a web page (including in a pop-up window), right-click the video itself. If it’s a RealPlayer video, you’ll be able to select “Play in RealPlayer” to open the clip in a standalone window and nab the URL as described previously.
If it’s a Windows Media video, you should be able to select Properties to display the Properties window which will show you the URL.
Still can’t find the video’s URL?
If you’re using Mozilla or Firefox, right-click an empty area of the web page and select View Page Info. Click the Media tab, and then scroll down the list until you see the URL of the video, which will probably be the only entry that isn’t an image file (.jpg, .gif, etc.).
If you find it in the list, click Save As to save a copy of the file on your hard disk. Note: Most publishers of online videos specifically disable the “Save As” feature that normally appears in Windows Media Player, but if it’s there, go ahead and use it. Only if the Save feature is disabled do you have to use this procedure.
If you’re using Internet Explorer, right-click an empty area of the web page and select View Source (this works in Mozilla/Firefox, too); some familiarity with the HTML language will make it easier to find the information you need. Press Ctrl-F and search the code for text that would likely appear in a video clip URL, such as .asf, .wmv, .ram, or rstp:. Somewhere in the code, you should see a full (or partial) URL for the source video clip.
At this point, you should have a URL that looks something like rstp://www.some.server/videos/penguin.asf. Copy the URL (highlight it and press Ctrl-C) and paste it (Ctrl-V) into a program designed to download a video stream, such as WMRecorder ($29.95, or
CoCSoft Stream Down ($39.00, If all goes well, you should have a file on your hard disk in about the same amount of time it would take to watch the video from start to finish; just double-click the file icon to play the clip.,
Only streaming videos have URLs that begin with rstp://if your URL starts with http://, you’ll probably be able to download the file without any special software. To do this, open Notepad, and type the following code: link
Save the file to your desktop, and give it the .html filename extension. Double-click the new file to open it in your default browser, right-click the link, and then select Save Link Target As.
Jitendra
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