There’s so much sweet and delicious video content out there, most of the time with no easy download link. The videos are in flash, after all. What to do?

FLV files are generally much smaller than AVI and MPEG files. You sacrifice sound and video quality for the fast load time and the ability to stream it online. A number of people like to talk about the great difference between CD sound and vinyl or MP3 quality versus CD. FLV video quality compared to AVI format is much like comparing a Harley Davidson to a tricycle in terms of speed. However the fact that FLV is much more compressed it is much easier to store online and much faster to load on your computer.

I noticed something the other day while I was cleaning up my system. Every time we watch a flash movie on our computer it is saved to our temporary internet files. I was in the internet options in Internet Explorer. If you notice in the temporary internet files section there is a settings button. I clicked it and came upon a “view files” button. When I clicked that a window popped up displaying all the content I had viewed that day. It is possible to rip from the internet the flash videos you have streamed directly on to your hard drive. It is also important to note that the video must be loaded in its entirety before you can copy it onto your hard drive. This is of course not a new feature but I was unaware of it and I thought I would share it with those who are still in dark on how to rip a flash file.

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Some Important Notes:

This technique does not work on Mozilla Firefox. In Firefox there is the page info section which allows you to download content. Unfortunately I have never been able to get it to work for a file over 80 kb. Average 5 minute flv file is about 10 mb.

YouTube videos can be ripped but will appear in the flash FLV format, unable to be played by standard media players. The best way to view them would be with FLV player; a video program specifically designed to show highly compressed video files. If you do not want FLV player and would prefer to have the video in AVI or MPEG format then you should use a converter. The Opell FLV converter is the most streamlined non-shareware application for the job. Opell is easy to use and rather quick when it comes to converting files.

Once a file has been converted you can edit in any movie making application you have but remember if you are trying to post copyrighted material, be careful. Doing so is still illegal and YouTube, Google Video, Dailymotion, and the others all have content checkers that would block any attempt to post.