Download streamed flash videos from the command line

I have just been looking for ways to download streamed videos into my hard drive so I can watch them later when I'm away from my wifi. With the power of linux I really wanted to find a way to do this in a simple way and ideally from the command line. So that's how I came across this tool called "get-flash-videos" which is a pretty descriptive name for the app.

I've tested it already and it works quite well, but I should note that you shouldn't use this to download anything you are not supposed to download. Just avoid doing anything illegal with this information of course.

Anyway, let's get started on how to install and use this tool.

There is quite a bit of information you can find on how to obtain and how to use this app on the following link --> https://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/ ... https://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/wiki/Installation

For my own use, I followed the Debian based distro guide which requires you to install

$ sudo apt-get install libwww-mechanize-perl libxml-simple-perl

then use wget to download the .deb file

$ wget http://get-flash-videos.googlecode.com/files/get-flash-videos_1.24-1_all.deb

Lastly, install it via

$ sudo dpkg -i get-flash-videos_1.24-1_all.deb

That's it, as easy as pie...

Now to use this little tool, use the following command to watch a video:

$ get_flash_videos -p http://website.url/video

or alternatively if you want to download the video directly to your hard drive use

$ get_flash_videos "http://website.url/video?f=1&v=1234" 

Enjoy... and if you want something specific for youtube, I've heard that youtube-dl is quite good but I haven't tried it myself yet.