can't capture FLV stream from member site

can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

I have tried several different apps (WM Recorder, Replay A/V, FLV Recorder, DL apps etc) to capture the live flash stream from a pay site but no luck. I am able to find the URL and I can paste it in a browser address bar and get the stream so I know the URL is correct but it will not stream for any of the video capture apps or downloaders. I just get a blank swf file.

The moderator "Stream-Recorder" mentioned that:
Web-sites with membership usually use the following things to prevent recording:
1. timestamps that expire
2. cookies
3. user-agent checking

I think this may be the problem. Is there a way to have the video capture app mimic a browser? Is there a way to have the browser cache the flash file (I checked the browser cache and it currently does not cache the stream). Any suggestions would be appreciated. I tried the screen capture apps but they provide poor quality and large files sizes.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

FLV Recorder captures packets from the flash player so IMHO it can capture more streams form member sites. Its recording abilities shouldn't be affected by timestamps, cookies or user-agent checking.

HTTP flash video streams are usually cached. And Replay AV can get them from the cache unless you use some web browser like Opera. But you can always open a cache folder manually.

RTMP Flash video streams can only be recorded by the above mentioned FLV Recorder as well as Replay Media Catcher and Orbit Downloader. But if I'm not mistaken they can be protected by timestamps only.

Are you sure the web-site uses flash streams? Can you PM me the stream URL? Please also post the web-site URL so that I can try to find some information about their broadcasts.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

This is not the URL of a stream. It is an .swf player. If they use flash video, them the filename in the URL will have .FLV extension.

You may try Replay Media Catcher or try to find the stream URL with URL Snooper.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

It is definitely Flash and that URL is what I found with URL Snooper2. If I paste the URL into a browser I get the flash stream so it must be the URL for the stream. I have tried many different ways to capture/record it but no success. It doesn't get stored in the browser cache either so I guess they have a technology that prevents recording.
Thanks for your help none the less.
Tim

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

SWF flash files are often used as players of FLV streams (Adobe Flash player is often used for this purpose). Flv streams have different URLs (http://, https://, rtmp://, rtmpt://). URL Snooper is not very good at finding RTMP URLs even after adding "flv;rtmp" to the "Also search for" edit box.

Demo versions of Replay Media Catcher and FLV Recorder can find the RTMP URLs. They can also record RTMP and HTTP flash video .FLV streams automatically. The demo versions are limited, but they allow you to evaluate whether the programs will be able to record the streams or not.

SWF flash files can get external content like a bunch of images. So there might be some other way of broadcasting video through the SWF file, but I really doubt that it is done this way on web-sites like this one.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

So you are saying that the URL http://www.met-cams.com/live/viewer_2.swf?.................
is not the actual URL for the stream even though I can enter it in my browser's address bar and get the stream? It is just the player for the stream?
Replay media catcher is not very good for catching URLs. I even tried it on some radio stations and it didn't find the URL. I did not try FLV recorder but I will see if it can find the stream URL.
Do you think the problem is finding the correct URL and once that is done it should be recordable?
I don't understand why the browser (IE and FF) do not cache it.
Thanks for your help.
Tim

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

Replay Media Catcher is very good at finding URLs of the stream formats it supports.

RTMP flash streams are not cached.

SWF must be a player for flash .FLV videos.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

You must have better luck than me with RMC and FLV recorder. I find them to be both very crappy apps. RMC has virtually no options but a record button and FLV recorder is even worse. Perhaps I will try Streambox.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

i dont think anyone recommended streambox. orbit might do the job...

if you give us the login we can try it. the moderator of this forum also talks with the developers of Replay Media Catcher so if its a problem with that, it can be fixed...

good luck!

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

+1

We have contacts with almost all major developers of streaming media recording software and DRM removal software. Usually we try to solve the problem ourselves. The tough cases are forwarded to the support teams of the software developers. You may have already seen them answering in the forums.

tjgal, you should believe compn. He is one of the most experienced and respected persons in the streaming media recording. I'm in the field since 2003 and he still amazes me by his skills.

The less "options" the software has, the easier it is for users. If software does the job perfectly why not having an easy to use interface? IMHO it is a big advantage.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

I believe the problem is that I can't find the correct URL for the stream. The best I can do is get a .swf URL with URL Snooper 2 but according to Stream Recorder, that is just the URL for the Flash Player that they use and not the actual stream URL. Replay A/V does not give me any URL at all and Replay Media Catcher does not have any option for capturing a URL. It just has a record button. So if anyone has a better way to get the stream URL I would love to hear it.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

in Replay Media Catcher hit the 'start recording' button, then refresh the page with the video

it should work, do it in the right order

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

I was able to capture the stream using Replay Media Catcher. I did not know that you had to start recording before starting the stream. I was starting the stream and then clicking the record button.
I can see some of the URL now but not all of it (it does not give the last part). I can see that it is an RTMP stream. However I am having a problem with some of the Flash files that I capture because it is in very fast motion. Do you know what might cause this?
Thanks for your help and persistence, I am learning quite a bit about video streaming.
Tim

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

What flash player do you use?

Try other flash players. You can find them in the following thread:
Playing captured .FLV videos

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

Replay Media Catcher creates somehow corrupted FLV files when recording live streams. You're supposed to set the fps value manually. Go to Setting --> Plug-in Options --> "FLV Timestamp Increment". You may also need to make them seekable with a MetaData injector and have audio/video sync problems. Do note that audio in live flash video use proprietary Nellymoser codec and it won't play in DirectShow based players.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

I am also able to capture the live RTMP stream using FLV Recorder which I decided to buy because it was superior to Replay Media Catcher for my needs (see post below for my review of these 2 stream capture apps).

Kron, I figured out that the FLV Timestamp Increment was causing video to playback very fast so I did adjust that number upwards and found that 100 was usually the best setting for my streams (but not always). It was one of the reasons I decided against RMC.

I have another issue that you touched on in your previous post. I find Flash video very annoying to play as a stand alone on computer. It takes awhile to load, It is not seekable (I can't jump to another place in the video or fast forward it or pause it). It is just start and stop (which takes you back to the beginning). I tried playing it in other video players such as VLC and MPC but there is no sound and it is not very seekable (sometimes causes the player to crash). I tried to convert it to another format (avi) but again no sound. I guess this is bacause of the proprietary Nellymoser codec that you mention. Is there way to work around this?

BTW - I have found this forum to be very helpful for me and I will help where I can.

Tim

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

After trying many stream capture apps I discovered that 2 would capture the RTMP live stream that I wanted to record. Replay Media Capture (RMC) and FLV Recorder (FLV R). I decided on FLV R for the following reasons.

Replay Media Catcher:
RMC required a FLV timestamp increment setting so that the speed of the recording would be accurate. This required additional work (tinkering) and the Flash recording was still not the proper speed half of the time.
RMC caused my utorrent app to crash every time it started so I could not run my utorrent when I was recording.
I could not play the Flash stream in my browser while I was capturing. (The website only allowed one connection to the server at a time).
When I clicked the "Stop recording" button it would not stop the recording. The only way I could stop the recording is to right click it and choose "cancel and save transfer". Once the recording was stopped the only way I could remove it from the list is to close the app. The choices of "Clear all finished" and Clear all Failed" did not clear it.
RMC did not have an integrated FLV player.
In general it was quite a buggy app. Version: 2.01.00.00 Build Date: Mar 22 2007

FLV Recorder:
FLV Recorder has very few options or settings but it did work quite well for my needs.
The main window has a tab for active recordings and separate tab for saved recordings so you can flip back and forth and play a saved recording on the integrated Flash player while you are recording another stream. More importantly the recordings were all good quality and I could view the Flash stream in my web browser while it was being recorded.
The integrated Flash player is convenient but it is a little buggy. When I choose "full screen" the video size doesn't change but the rest of my screen is filled with black and I can't get back to the original size so I have to do an "alt F4" to close the player window.

One annoyance I have with both apps is that they do not show the URL of the stream. RMC will show part of it when you right click the stream in the list and choose "properties" but it does not give the complete URL - it sort of chops it off. FLV R does not show any part of the URL and I could not find an option to show it. The apps must have the URL if they are capturing the stream so why don't they allow you to view or copy the URL.

FLV R is superior to RMC but both apps require some work to fix these problems I encountered.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

Replay Media Catcher creates somehow corrupted FLV files when recording live streams. But you can set the fps value manually:
You may also need to make them seekable with a MetaData injector and have audio/video sync problems. Please note that audio in live flash video use proprietary Nellymoser codec and it won't play in DirectShow based players (thanx to Kron for the advice)

I use Replay Media Catcher 2.10 and it is the most stable stream recorder I have ever tried. And I'm not talking about flash recorders only! RMC has never crashed on my PC.
I had problem recording .FLV stream only once. However I've never recorded live RTMP streams so that could be a problem. The developer has been notified and I think this problem will be fixed very fast.

Besides RMC can capture MP3 RTMP streams, tag and rename MP3 music files, rename videos from popular web-sites like youtube.

uTorrent 1.7 is not stable. I've been using version 1.6.1 and have never had any conflict with any application including Replay Media Catcher.

FLV Recorder crashes every time I start playing a flash video stream. And it is a not unique problem of my computer (you can many posts about it this forum).

I don't really need a built-in player. I use K-Lite Mega codec pack with Media Player Classic to play almost all video files, except only DVDs that I prefer to play with PowerDVD. It plays flash videos without any problem.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

I agree utorrent 1.7* is not that stable so I uninstalled it and installed 1.6 which never crashed on me and RMC causes utorrent 1.6 to crash as well.

After further use of both of these apps (Replay Media Catcher and FLV Recorder) I have found that FLV Recorder is not as good as I initially thought. Some recordings have frozen video while the sound continues fine. I am trying different scenarios to see if I can isolate why this happens but 75% of the time it works well. It is funny but the problem with RMC is that it will sometimes record the stream in fast motion and the problem with FLV R is it will sometimes have frozen video.

They obviously use different techniques for capturing the stream because RMC does not allow the stream to be viewed in the browser while recording and FLV R does.

Regarding the seek and search problem with the Flash video, I have found a nice free MetaData injector app: "FLV Metadata Injector" http://www.buraks.com/flvmdi/. It is very quick and easy to use.

I am still working on the nellymoser codec problem for converting flash files

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

http://nellymoser.codec.googlepages.com/
has grouped together some good forum posts on the nellmoser codec subject

you could just use riva flv player and a sound card recorder to record the sound in 1x (realtime) speed..

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

I had a look at that page and there is some good info but it is more than I want to get into. I would convert them if it was easy but it is not and it isn't worth my time to do all the extra work just to convert them to another format. My main reason for wanting to covert them was because the flash files were not seekable and they took a long time to load in the player. However the FLV Metadata Injector by Buraks solved the seek issue and I tried the Riva Flash player and the files load much quicker than with the other 2 Flash Players I tried. So I am happy to leave them as Flash files. Thanks for your help.

Re: can't capture FLV stream from member site

 

Please discuss FLV conversion in the following threads:
Converting .FLV videos
Converting .FLV files to .AVI, .MPG: audio and video sync problem