My Blog

You have just watch an interesting video in YouTube or other sites and want to save it. There are many website and software which able to 're-download' the flash video from that website. But...

Do you ever notice that when you have finished watching the video, you can replay the video quickly without any delay to buffer the video, you can also jump to another part of the video quickly. Why? Because the video has been downloaded/cached, but it is hidden somewhere.

How do I get that video?
In windows, the video usually stored in the temporary folder. The filename is flaXX.tmp, where XX is number. Yes that is it. It's easy to find it. But it is not easy to save it. The file cannot be copied, moved, opened, and renamed. The file will be deleted if you close the tab which contains the video, or close the browser, or even if you kill the browser process. There is nothing you can do with that file.

But there is another way.
Here we go:
1. Go to Menu -> Help -> About Opera.
2. In paths section, look at Opera's cache directory.
3. Play any video and make sure it has been buffered completely.
4. Make sure the tab which contain the video is not closed.
5. Open File Explorer/Windows Explorer/Dolphin/Nautilus/Finder.
5. Go to Opera's cache directory in step 2.
6. Make sure you see many oprXXXXX files. Then sort by size.
7. Run media player like VLC, SMPlayer, Media Player Classic, or MPlayer.
8. Started from the largest file, drag the files to the media player.
9. If the player returns error, try another file.
10. If the player plays the video you don't want, try another file.
11. If the player plays the desired video, copy the file to anywhere you like.
12. Rename the file and give it extension like flv or mp4.

This instruction also can be done in many other web browsers as long as you know where it saves the cache. But as far as I know, you can't do this with Safari.

Enjoy