Clear video history. Download hundreds of tiny Flash Vids

[Azruh]

My Scenario:


I am downloading many flash videos from a site with very good anti-download protection.

So far, only FlashGot can download the REAL content from the website.


I login to the site, and start the first video within a chapter (up to 20 videos per chapter).
I play the first couple of seconds of each video in that chapter (clicking 'Next' in the flash player), in order for each video file to show in FlashGot's download list.

I then count the number of videos in the chapter (on the website), then check that FlashGot has the same number of files in the download list.

I then save the files (to a folder named the same as the chapter), using Firefox's built-in Download manager (I also use download status bar). FlashGot detects that these files all have the exact same name, so the second & all sequential files have an incremental number at the end of the file name (since they need to be unique). Fortunately, these are sequentially ordered in the order which you played them (not which one downloads first). The down side is that the first file doesn't have a number at the end, and always show at the bottom of a sorted list (e.g. in Windows)


Then comes the difficult part;
While all the videos for a chapter is downloading, I must try to play the first video of the next chapter (as this is where the player will resume from, & I don't want it to re-download the last video from the last chapter each time), then I need to pause the first video, and REFRESH the webpage (in order to clear the FlashGot video download list). After several minutes the webpage will finally re-render, and start playing the first video within the next chapter (where I left it at).
At which point I need to redo all my view settings, and get ready to do it all over again.


I noticed that Other Video/Flash downloaders I tried, have a "CLEAR" button/option, to allow you to manually remove all entries from the flash download list (the files available to download).


Is there a way to get FlashGot to "clear the video history"?

So far I have utilized this work around for the first 500 video files - but about two thousands more to go. If there's anything that I can do differently, to help simplify or streamline this process - please let me know.

Thanks,
Azruh

[Giorgio Maone]

Looks like a good RFE for my TODO list.
Hope to make it in next release.

[therube]

+1

[therube]

Please check the latest development build.

(Heh.)

[Azruh]

I just downloaded the latest version, and thought I would read the change log (in case the "Clear" feature was added - It Was!).

Thanks for adding this to your app, and doing it so promptly! very impressive! I have tested this out & its great.

Today while I was on the website that I'm downloading videos from, my internet was going real slow for a while, and when the webpage finally finished downloading the content - the formatting was all messed up, and I was able to copy the Chapter & Video Title list as text (I normally have to screen shot it into an .rtf which ends up being 10 pages long, then using FreeOCR)

When I was pasting the list of Chapter & Video Titles into a txt doc, I noticed that each video title was preceded by a 5 digit number (some sort video id used by the flash player, setup by the provider?).

When I mouse-over the FlashGot icon in my Firefox Status bar (at the bottom of my browser), I see the list of files to download in this format:

Code: Select all

video/flv:content.flv?cid=21334 (0B)
video/x-flv:content.flv?cid=21338 (5MB)
video/x-flv:content.flv?cid=21351 (29MB)
video/x-flv:content.flv?cid=21355 (11MB)

I found that the ID's shown in FlashGot's popup, matched the ID's which I got from the text from the website.

Normally when I download these files I get the following:

Code: Select all

Some_Name_Which_Doesn't_Relate_to_the_content.flv
Some_Name_Which_Doesn't_Relate_to_the_content(1).flv
Some_Name_Which_Doesn't_Relate_to_the_content(2).flv

*On Win Vista it shows in the above order (correct for playback), but on Win7 the first flv is at the bottom of the list (breaks playback order)

If all downloads have the same file name when saving to the destination (as above), It would be good if the user could choose a file naming convention (toggle radio buttons in the settings?).
Default: use the standard file name method (incremental number being appended to the end of the file name),
Alternative: use the ID's of the Flash files for the file names (since you are already displaying these values - you should already have these ID's stored in variables or an array).

Using the ID's will also help with correct file name ordering issues as they are already sequential.

It might also be useful to make the first file (1) and the second file (2) when saving files of the same name (not just detecting that the file name already exists, then adding sequential numbers there after - but checking before hand to see if you are about to save files of the same name)

Thanks,
Azruh

[Azruh]

Sometimes I find that while a bunch of flash vid's are downloading (e.g.), and I have the Flash player paused - when I Clear the flash video list, it often repopulates the list when some of the downloads complete.

This prevents me from pre-queuing the next chapter while I wait for the current chapter to finish downloading.

Strangely, It doesn't seem to do it while the last 3 or 4 vids download or when they finish...?

[Giorgio Maone]

Sometimes I find that while a bunch of flash vid's are downloading (e.g.), and I have the Flash player paused - when I Clear the flash video list, it often repopulates the list when some of the downloads complete.

Investigating, thanks.

[Giorgio Maone]

Please check latest development build, thanks.