Requesting help saving flash file... from thesinmpsons.com

[teknomedic]

Alright... got it all figured out... so thank you!

Thanks...

TK.

Sorry, but I didn't really understand what exactly do you wanna save from this web-site. Episode guide?

[teknomedic]

Yeah...

When you go to the page it's the large yellow "400" with homer's eyes... it pops-up all 400 episodes as it loads.

Here's a direct link to the main file...
http://www.thesimpsons.com/images/S4..._test64_v8.swf

Even going to the direct link doesn't fully work... the pictures load, but non of the air dates, titles or episode numbers do.

When you load on the "official page" everything works.

I'm sure they're loading content from another location on demand but I'm not versed enough to figure it out. Some of the episode "blocks" contain clips of the show as well.

Any help in getting this figured out will be appreciated.

TK.

It is not obvious for me what kind of content do you wanna save to your hard disk. Complete web-site? Do you need just descriptions of episodes and their air dates?

To download complete web-sites or selected directories you may use Offline Explorer Pro (OEP). It can download Macromedia Flash (.SFW) files and get links from it. It also provides support and extracts links from Java and VB Scripts, Java Classes, Cascading Style Sheets (.CSS), XML/XSL/DTD, Table Of Contents (.TOC), MPEG 3 Play List (.M3U), Authorware (.AAM), Acrobat (.PDF), RealMedia (.SMIL, .RAM, .RPM), VRML (.WRL, .WRZ), QuickTime video (.MOV), WAP pages and MS NetShow Channel (.NSC) files.

And you don't have to buy OEP to test it. It is absolutely free for the first 30 days.

[teknomedic]

I'll try to explain better... I'm provding the links again below.... I hope I can get what I'm looking for explained better this time... What I'm lookin for is the yellow background that says "400 Episodes"... the Flash will then pop-up all 400 episodes. You can then zoom in and see a picture of the episode, along with title, air date, and episode number... some even have a video clip of the episode you can play... and most have a scrolling quote from one of the characters.

Here's where the main flash is at... this is the only place I've seen where everything works:
http://www.thesimpsons.com/index.html

I do NOT want the whole website... I don't care about the forums or anything else... I just want the fully working flash that's on top of the main page, with clips, episode names etc. I know it will be a slightly large download once I figure out where they're keeping the pictures, clips, and episode info but that's fine.

Here's exactly what I'm tying to get off the website... but even when you load this directly from the link, only the pictures load... the episode info and clips still don't...
http://www.thesimpsons.com/images/S4..._test64_v8.swf

What I'd like to do is have this load everything from my HDD out of a directory... I have adobe flash CS3 installed and when I load the SWF file from above, it gives me an error about missing files... I'm sure once I can locate the server or location of these files and can download them to my root to where the SWF file is located... everything should work.. I hope.

So I hope I got that explained well... I want (from my hard drive) to be able to double click the flash file and have it load just like it is from the website... I of course want all the contect that the flash can request as I don't want to have to be connected to the internet for everything to work.. and I'm only interested in the interactive flash episode guide that is at the top of the page... the one that says "400 episodes" with the 00 as Homer's eyes.

...now.. they do have a link to "episode guide"... but that's not what I'm looking for (that one is text based and non-interactive)... that is below the main flash interactive guide that I'm trying to get.

--sorry about not explaining more before... this "mod approved posting" had me trying shorter versions of my posts before I figured out the system here.. and when they finally posted my messages... they used the short versions, lol--

TK.

You need an HTML page with all java scripts as well as the flash .SWF file with all the resources mentioned in it. To download such content I suggest you to use an offline browser. I think the best one that can exract links from JavaScript and flash files is Offline Explorer Pro. If it doesn't work for you, please post about it. This is a tough job and the developers may need to make some improvements to download everything you need completely. Hopefully they can do it and do it fast. At least they were able to fix everything I needed in the past.

By the way to find which episodes have videos you may open an .XML file from the cache folder of your web browser with a text editor and search for the following string "<video>s" (without quotes).

[teknomedic]

Thanks... I've been playing around with Offline Explorer Pro but I can't seem to get it to work correctly... part of the problem is me I'm sure... Would you be willing to try to download this and see if it works for you? If you can't get it to go then I'll know I have to talk with the Offline people... but if it works for you would you be willing to talk me through setting up offline correctly?

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

[teknomedic]

I'm making some progress anyway... but it's only because I'm using Flash CS3 that I'm getting anywhere... so far, all of the 'flash' programs I've tried and even Offline Explorer have all failed to help me...

I've gotten the locations of and downloaded:
1) the main SWF...
2) ...an xml file that has all the episode titles, air dates, quotes...
3) ...and I've just now figured out where the lowres and highres pictures are... and I've now downloaded those as well.
4) ((unable to get I think)) clips of episodes that were there yesterday... they moved the file and seem to have removed the clips and updated the xml file so I can't even begin to figure out were the clips were stored.... oh well.

I think I have everything I need... BUT... the main SWF file is still pointing online for all the pictures... instead of making the SWF file look to a local directory, they made it point to a URL so no matter if I download the pictures... I'm currently stuck getting the SWF to load from my directory.


is there a way I can edit or change where the SWF file gets the pictures so I can point it to a local directory instead of trying to connect online????

Here is the reply from the developer of Offline Explorer Pro:

OEP can make links in the flash files local. However there could be a problem 'coz such links can be calculated from internal parameters as well as external XML or other files.

I would suggest you to select the Project that partially downloaded the site, click the AutoSave button on the Internal Browser toolbar and then
click Browse. Offline Explorer Pro should download missing files.

[teknomedic]

Tried that and the program crashed with "access violations at address 0000000".... lol.

Is there a way to directly edit a flash file?