I came across an interesting plugin for Firefox yesterday that saves Flash movies to your computer's hard drive for later viewing. I like keeping movies on my netbook computer for viewing when I am bored or on airplanes (both the same thing, I s'pose). Movies are displayed in Flash format on youTube, Goole Video, and more; indeed, the plug-in displays a dialog box of all sites it is aware of.
In FireFox, get the Video DownloadHelper plugin from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006?src=api . It installs a button on the Firefox toolbar that wiggles in color when you open a Web page with a downloadable movie.
Using Advanced Search in Google Video, I looked for "science fiction" movies longer than 20 minutes, and found several. I got Video DownloadHelper to download two right away, each movie being about 1.3 hours long.The movies are saved as FLV files, which can be played back by movie playback software on any Linux computer, as well as by the free FLV Player on Windows computers. (Dunno about Macs.)
(There is no majik to what Video DownloadHelper does: any Web browser has to receive a stream of the Flash file so that you can view it. The stream is stored as a FLV file in your browser's cache folder, and is given a system-designated file name. You could probably retrieve it yourself, but the Firefox plugin makes it easier, hence the "helper" portion of Videio DownloadHelper name.)
Playback on iPhone
(You only need to convert FLV files if your playback device does not support Flash. PCs and Macs do, so no conversion needed; iPhones and iPads do not, so conversion is needed.)
As we all know, Apple infamously locked Flash video out of its lines of portable devices, such as iPod and iPhone. The Video DownloadHelper can convert the FLV file to other formats -- including MP4 format for the iPhone -- but I found this part does not work well.
On Linux, it requires a command-line utility that the makers of Video DownloadHelper admit does not necessarily work; on Windows, some sort of authorization is needed, and so I didn't bother.
Instead, I got a free FLV-to-iPhone converter from CNET named Free FLV to iPhone Converter. It converted the 1.3-hour long movies quite quickly. The resulting file was 450MB, so I figure I can fit about 90 movies on my iTouch!
(This program converts to formats suitable for iPhone, iTouch, and iPods. The converter has two nice features: one merges a number of FLV files into one; the other is a button that opens the folder containing the converted movies.)
When conversion is finished, copy the resulting MP4 file to the iPhone:
1. Connect iPhone to computer.
2. Start up iTunes.
3. Drag MP4 file from its folder into the Movies folder of the iPhone Device.
4. Use the iPhone's Video app to watch it!
In FireFox, get the Video DownloadHelper plugin from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006?src=api . It installs a button on the Firefox toolbar that wiggles in color when you open a Web page with a downloadable movie.
Using Advanced Search in Google Video, I looked for "science fiction" movies longer than 20 minutes, and found several. I got Video DownloadHelper to download two right away, each movie being about 1.3 hours long.The movies are saved as FLV files, which can be played back by movie playback software on any Linux computer, as well as by the free FLV Player on Windows computers. (Dunno about Macs.)
(There is no majik to what Video DownloadHelper does: any Web browser has to receive a stream of the Flash file so that you can view it. The stream is stored as a FLV file in your browser's cache folder, and is given a system-designated file name. You could probably retrieve it yourself, but the Firefox plugin makes it easier, hence the "helper" portion of Videio DownloadHelper name.)
Playback on iPhone
(You only need to convert FLV files if your playback device does not support Flash. PCs and Macs do, so no conversion needed; iPhones and iPads do not, so conversion is needed.)
As we all know, Apple infamously locked Flash video out of its lines of portable devices, such as iPod and iPhone. The Video DownloadHelper can convert the FLV file to other formats -- including MP4 format for the iPhone -- but I found this part does not work well.
On Linux, it requires a command-line utility that the makers of Video DownloadHelper admit does not necessarily work; on Windows, some sort of authorization is needed, and so I didn't bother.
Instead, I got a free FLV-to-iPhone converter from CNET named Free FLV to iPhone Converter. It converted the 1.3-hour long movies quite quickly. The resulting file was 450MB, so I figure I can fit about 90 movies on my iTouch!
(This program converts to formats suitable for iPhone, iTouch, and iPods. The converter has two nice features: one merges a number of FLV files into one; the other is a button that opens the folder containing the converted movies.)
When conversion is finished, copy the resulting MP4 file to the iPhone:
1. Connect iPhone to computer.
2. Start up iTunes.
3. Drag MP4 file from its folder into the Movies folder of the iPhone Device.
4. Use the iPhone's Video app to watch it!
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