Extracting SWF file from website

OK, I know this isn't strictly Quicktime, but.... I am a science teacher, and I had a kid take some video of some demonstrations after school with his cell phone. He got the video onto a sort of Verizon share website, and I'm trying to extract the video to post on my school website.

We've tried sending multimedia messages from his phone to mine, but that isn't working. Any kind of program that can extract SWF files from a website? It also seems to be some kind of javascript or something...the name of the SWF file isn't in the source code.

Thanks in advance.

G4 iBook (and others) ;-), Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Feb 20, 2006 7:49 PM

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12 replies

Feb 20, 2006 8:49 PM in response to Leanna Aker

The only thing I can is a SWF is a .sfw, being a flash file. ???

Maybe some sort of streaming flash from a stream server. Flash can interact like a phone call with video and audio. A lot of web camera site are using flash.

Can we some how get what you want. I'm going to stick my head out on this one. More than like the answer is no.

Now you may want to contact Verzion to do this. And more than likly they can do this. But it's going to cost you.

Can you post the source code or is this site we can go to. Again this my be server side scripting. By which we won't have access to all of the code driving this site.

Feb 21, 2006 5:28 PM in response to Leanna Aker

This page:
http://www.vzwpix.com/share.do?inviteToken=5EFr4fJFm57SvhK7oL5L

Does not have any flash files embedded. It has buttons that link to other pages that do. For instance, the top graphic button in the "Science v" section is a blue bucket on gray asphalt. That button links to this page:
http://www.vzwpix.com/mms/guest/slideshow.do;jsessionid=aoIBVCQkZhU9?inviteToken =5EFr4fJFm57SvhK7oL5L&index=0

In Firefox, go to that page, where you can actually see the Flash movie, then command-i or pull down the Tools menu and select "Page Info". Next, click the "Media" button in the info window. Scroll down in the list until you see:

/flash_player/AudioVideo.swf

Select it by clicking on it once.

Click the "Save As" button in the gray pane at the bottom of the info window. If the gray pane appears to be blank it is probably because the gray pane is too short to show the info - make it taller by clicking and dragging up on the dot in the horizontal middle of the top of the gray area.

Feb 21, 2006 5:46 PM in response to Leanna Aker

You'll find the file name in the page code. It is .flv (Flash Video). The .swf file is only for the Verison "player" embedded in the same page.
The only way I could think of saving the file is using a screen recording app like Snapz Pro.
Maybe, with new owners, the software engineers that invented and maintain Flash will give some tools back to QuickTime users.

Feb 21, 2006 6:15 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Why those sneaky #$!^&@s! 🙂 Kirk's right, the swf is just the player interface. The movie is actually...

http://www.vzwpix.com:80/mi/650285042015568090.3gpp2
(right click and "Download linked file" or paste the url into Safari's downloads window to save the movie.)

Which will download in Safari with the extension .qt - you can change the extension to .mov (it is one.) If you use Firefox, just paste the url into a browser window's location bar - it will download the file with the original .3gpp extension - change it to .mov or it won't play.

When you view the page source of the other pages at that site (for each page on which you actually see a movie playing) to find a url of a movie such as the one above, search for .swf (use command-f to find it) and you will see:
' <param name="FlashVars" VALUE="MediaType=FLV&MediaURL=http://www.vzwpix.com:80/mi/65028504 2015568090.3gpp2?%26amp;iconifyVideo=false%26amp;outquality=56%26fmt=flv" />
<embed src="/flash_player/AudioVideo.swf" wmode="transparent" FlashVars="MediaType=FLV&MediaURL=http://www.vzwpix.com:80/mi/65028504 2015568090.3gpp2?%26amp;iconifyVideo=false%26amp;outquality=56%26fmt=flv" quality="high" menu="false" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="265" height="222" name="AudioVideo" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>'


Note the "MediaURL=http://www.vzwpix.com:80/mi/65028504 2015568090.3gpp"

3gpp = 3gp = Popular format for movies recorded with video phones. QuickTime will play 3gp video.

Feb 21, 2006 6:24 PM in response to JulieJulieJulie

It seems like more issues but the save is easy.
The file is already in a QuickTime format and is easy to save.
Copy the link provided by JulieJulieJulie (above) and paste it into a new (empty) browser window. The 294KB "movie" is really in gpp format (cell phone) and you can use the browser to "save" the file.
Beats buying software and re-recording.
Shame on me for not properly parsing the link and believing it was Flash Video. This is how we all learn.

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Extracting SWF file from website

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