Internet streaming website be like:

Oh no, you can't right click and save the video file on your computer!

*f12* *ctrl+f* *<video* *right click* *open in new tab* *right click* *save as*

Tell me more, this does sound useful

Fuck I hate myself for never thinking of this.

Wait no. I did with a PDF file inside an iframe. But ehh.

Some websites use custom player: F12 network usage, find source url, open in new tab, save as

@Floydian It's never crossed my mind to look for it inside the page source.

I always just went to a different site that did allow download lol with right click lmao

@Stuxnet seems like you only watch popular stuff. Sometimes, finding a website with video download is impossible so you have to get creative.

@BambuSource Indeed I do watch mainly popular movies/TV shows.

Stuff like King of the Hill, Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers, Silicon Valley, and so on.

I've got Prime Video and Hulu (for a few more months; part of a promo to get Spotify & Hulu for $5 a month), so I usually find them all on there. Mainly use free sites for streaming sports at the moment.

I used to love FlashGot for this kind of stuff but I don't think it works with current Firefox versions anymore 😟

@Floydian unless you buy it, it keeps on popping up for activation like windows

I've been manipulating pages since I learnt front-end..
Downloading files, hiding sidebars, advertisements, removing popups, what not..!!

@BambuSource you are a true gentleman and a scholar!
@Floydian I haven't got much experience with html and websites😉

I usually do that to every fucking modal pop-over nagging about member only access or my bloody ad-blocker... Most of them are pure CSS/HTML... I mean, c'mon guys... At least load some fake fucking data behind the blur-effect to prevent this work-around...

I'll just leave this here: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

@Hakash omg yes I love this! I do it all the time

@Floydian I used to do that. Then I bought it as I am using it regularly.

By the way it's 3 years, not 3 versions.

I downloaded music from Bandcamp this way 😏 I think it would not be possible to download the whole files if done the right way... like switching frameworks and libraries to production mode and making sure the SSL does not error out 🤣🤣😂😂😂

@Floydian I used to think that also. But I just didn't want to spend any more time with cracking or patching it whenever a new version comes.

If you see all antivirus software follows same business model, so it doesn't bother me that much. But a perpetual licence is always welcome.

@BambuSource most of places you won't get a plain URL in video tag instead you'll get a blob:// URL.

Everytime 😂

This stuff is pure gold. I always do this, I like to mess with websites' DOM and ruin whatever protection they've in place. It's so easy once you know the right... tools 😂

Anyway, this is the way I do it now. When i was a kid, I used to do it differently on my Windows machine: I had discovered the wonders of the cache folder and found a way to snoop into it to find whatever movie or media stream I was watching. It was as fun as a treasure hunt. Ah, I kind o miss those old times...not.

I’m wondering... How do sites like Netflix prevent this from happening? And what’s stopping less serious sites from implementing the same?

@MasterCarl they have more complex streaming Alternatives.
In practice, they send lots of small ~4s video bits to the clients browser via a blob:video-url. Not one large video file. These aren't stored for much longer than you play them. I don't know how this works - it's still "hackable" but much more difficult. I had an app that pretended to stream blob videos and assembled these video pieces together - the file size is huge but it works.

I guess it's too much work for a semi-illegal site xD