Saving Flash Animations

by Tim Robinson

It is possible to capture Flash animations from a Web page and save them to a local hard drive for playback later. Here are three simple methods.

Method One:

If you wish to save the .swf files, they can be found in your browser's cache after you visit a site that used them.

  1. To save time later, clear the browser's cache first.
  2. Next, visit the site with the Flash animation and play it.
  3. Now open Home in a file manager and show hidden files. In that folder there should be a hidden folder for your browser, Firefox, Konqueror or Opera. In that folder should be the .swf file you wish to save.
  4. Right click it and select copy.
  5. Navigate to the location where you wish to save the file, right click an open area and select paste.

Method Two:

  1. Saving Flash files from Firefox
  2. Click Tools - Page Info
  3. Click the Media Tab on the Page Info Windows
  4. The media tab has a complete list (with preview) of Images, CSS Files and Shockwave Flash files that were downloaded by the Firefox browser while rendering (loading) the page.
  5. Scroll down the list and locate the .swf file.
  6. Click the "Save As" button. Select some directory on your hard drive and save the file (No need for a third-party plug-in).

Method Three:

Install the Fast Video Plugin for Firefox from:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3590

and play the flv file, (from www.youtube.com, for example), with mplayer. This excerpt is taken from the linked page:

Fast Video Download can save embedded video files from the following video-hosting servers:

Angry Alien, Anime Episodes, Anime Forever, Bad Jojo, Blip.TV, Bo-Funk, Bolt, Break.com, Bubblare.dk, CollegeHumor.com, Current.TV, Daily Motion, Danerd.com, eVideo Share, Google Video, Grinvi, iFilm, Libero.IT Video, HI5 (VideoEgg), My Space, MetaCafe, News.NTV.ru, PornoTube, Put File, Streetfire, Totally Crap, You Tube, V-Social and Vidiac.

  • Just in ONE click on the status-bar or custom toolbar icon, FVD immediately opens the regular "Save As" dialog with already placed video title and extension.
  • FVD supports additional video formats at Video, Break.com, Blip.TV. You can choose desired format via Preferences.
  • FVD is able to pick any multimedia links from embedded objects on ordinary pages.
  • If there's only single link, standard dialog open immediately. Otherwise, links are listed in pop-up window.
  • Processing of embedded YouTube video objects: Special download link will appear under every embedded YouTube Flash-Player posted on common pages such as blogs and web-boards.
  • At last, FVD supports DownThemAll and FlashGot: You can turn on interaction with your desired download manager in Preferences.

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