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March 3, 2006
Google Video Getter again
It seems the Google Video Getter Greasemonkey script I wrote a while back has become very popular. It was on Digg.com, and since then I've gotten tons of inquiries and comments about it. The Google Video service is still in beta and changes regularly. As such I've had to update the script a few times to keep it functional with their changes.
Here's the latest...
Google Video now uses javascript to load the Flash Player. This kind of breaks the method used previously by my Greasemonkey script because it essentially tries to hide the HTML that the script was searching for. Not to worry though, it was a pretty easy fix. I also tightened up the code to a mere 3 lines!
Click here to install the new Google Video Getter 2
So why do you need this script? Doesn't Google offer downloads for their free videos?
... yes and no.
If you go to any free video offering on Google Video and click the Download button for "Mac and Windows" it forces you to download a Google Video Player application to playback Google's own .gvp video format. These videos do not play in other applications. I checked out the .gvp file, and its really just a text file with a pointer to a video file on the web... I copied the code and manually downloaded the video referenced and discovered it was a .avi (presumably DivX), but it would not play in Windows Media Player because it uses a DRM scheme for file protection.
There are alternative download options for the free videos though. These include videos formatted for the Video iPod and Sony PSP. I haven't really tried these, but I assume they don't have the same DRM protection since they need to be able to play on those devices.
So really, you don't need this script at all. You can download the videos formatted for iPod and PSP from Google Video. But for some reason, people often write me and leave comments asking for this script and how to make it work again.
Posted by jkinberg at March 3, 2006 10:57 AM
Comments
Josh, thanks much for your response and new script. The new name for the link "Find Flash Video" is very appropriate ;-)
Posted by: Babu at March 4, 2006 9:01 AM
I'm goofing off kicking back and tossing down a few microbeers looking for some vlogs to watch and isn't it ironic that your "experiment in videoblogging" is mostly blogging. Oh well, I give it a good read after a coffee in the morning. Josh, thanks for all helpful posts to Yahoo group!
Posted by: Jimmy jchtv.com at March 4, 2006 3:08 PM
Youtube changed their server in the last couple days, evidently...your extension doesn't work anymore! It was great fun while it lasted :(
Posted by: Erik at March 15, 2006 11:32 PM
www.myspace.com is 16 million users strong. I bet there would be a huge interest in writing a script to DL these FLVs!
Stu.
Posted by: Stuart at March 16, 2006 4:05 AM
hey e youtube script doenstwork for me :(
i get the php lin and i rename it but it doest seem to download anything
Posted by: gil at March 16, 2006 10:36 AM
whenever I "save to disk" - I have no idea where the file is downloaded to.
So I do a find/search on my entire computer and there is never any results for the file name I just downloaded.
Where does it go? How come I can't navigate to where I want it saved?
Thanks in advanced,
MM
Posted by: madjik man at March 17, 2006 12:49 PM
Can you provide the updated script for youtube.com
Posted by: Djash at April 29, 2006 3:01 AM
I found youtube.com changed to require "t=[check_code]" field in getter URL.
So now, we must change script to find both Video_ID and checkcode from "new FlashObject" in "playerDiv".
I hope you to provide new youtube getter...
Posted by: Peki at April 30, 2006 7:43 AM
I am the Founder of 
