getting shockwave files

Alpha_Hazard · Post by **Alpha_Hazard** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 7:58 pm

Can anybody tell me how to download shockwave files from the internet. I've seen some Homestar Runner stuff and was curious how that is done.

burntoast · Post by **burntoast** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 8:33 pm

I guess you could give this program a try. It's available as a trial download, and you can purchase it for $40. You might find similar programs by going to a search engine such as www.search.com, and type in "shockwave extract" or something similar.

kmv · Post by **kmv** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 2:41 am

They are just files served up via HTTP, you can get them any way you want. All you really need to know is the URI and that is in the source.

To do the download I would use 'wget', but almost any file transfer utility that understands HTTP will do - even your browser will do it if you ask it in the right way.

I guess the next question is: was that enough of an answer, or does it need to be more detailed? And if so, how detailed? For example: do you know how to find the SWF in the source?

Alpha_Hazard · Post by **Alpha_Hazard** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 5:24 pm

well, the problem I think is not actually downloading it. I used "Save target as" to download the actual Page, but as far as getting the SWF from that I'm kinda lost.

Sarcastic Assassin · Post by **Sarcastic Assassin** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 7:53 pm

Simple as this: (relatively speaking)
1) Watch the Shockwave movie you want to download. Look at the URL bar (the one that says "Address" next to it), and look at whatever is past the last slash. (In this example, "example.swf")
2) In Internet Explorer, click Tools -> Internet Options -> Settings... (it should be a button, about halfway down, in the box)
3) Click the View Files... button. A window should pop up, with a lot of weird file names. Welcome to the Temporary Internet Files folder, where all the images, web pages, and *.swf files you see while browsing the web are downloaded to.
4) Here's the tricky part. Look through the list of files (You may want to click View -> Details, and then View -> Arrange Icons By -> Name. Then, locate the *.swf file you were looking for (in my example, it was "example.swf").
5) Click Edit -> Copy.
6) Go to where you want to save the *.swf file, and right click -> Paste.

If any dialog boxes come up, click yes. Unfortunately, I don't know of anything that will let you view *.swf files (I have Flash MX, but that cost me a hell of a lot of money), or convert them to a certain format, but look around.[/list]

Sarcastic Assassin · Post by **Sarcastic Assassin** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 8:25 pm

D'oh, I screwed up. As I was on homestarrunner.com, I realized that most people put their Flash animations in web pagesin HTML files, rather than a direct link to the SWF file. This is going to be more complicated than I thought. Maybe I'll put up a tutorial elsewhere...

kmv · Post by **kmv** » Sun Feb 08, 2004 7:33 am

If you do a Save As in IE you are not guaranteed of getting the file (at least mine doesn't), not sure why but if I had to guess I'd say it simply doesn't bother to grab embedded objects. Now, if you were doing that with Moz you wouldn't have a problem (it just works), but there you go.

So we do it this way:

Step 1: Browse to the SWF
Open your browser and go to the page you want. Take note of the URL

Step 2: Identify the file
Do a view source on the page. Search for "embed", and next to it you will see a "sc=" parameter the value of which is the SWF file. Take note of that value. If you use any of the tools I mentioned in my previous post you now have enough information to use them, if you don't (or don't understand) then proceed to step 3.

Step 3: Create a local HTML file
In Notepad (or your favourite text editor) create a new file with the following in it:

Code: Select all

<html><head></head><body><a href="XXXX">Save This</a></body></html>

Replace the XXXX with everything from the URL you noted up until and including the last forward slash ('/'), and put the SWF file name and extension you noted from the embed tag. Save the file with a HTML extension.

Step 4: Get the SWF using your browser
Open the file you just created in your browser, you will see a blank page with a link saying "Save This" on it. Right click on the link and choose "Save Link Target As".

Assuming you didn't make a typo in the XXXX replacement you will now have a SWF on your hard disk which you can open with QuickTime, Shockwave, and lots of others. If you did make a typo then you will have just saved an HTML error message about not being about to locate the file into the file on your HD and given it a SWF extension.

There are LOADS of other ways of doing this, but this way will work if all you have is IE.

bum · Post by **bum** » Sun Feb 08, 2004 6:29 pm

ok thiers a realy easy brainless way of doing this. get a program like IDM (interned download manager -actual name pf prog) which will download any swf files automaticaly when you click on the link to them. other dl managers may be able to do this too, just ad the .swf extention to the list of file types to download

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Sun Feb 08, 2004 7:12 pm

View Source, CRTL + F ".swf", copy/paste url, download, done...

Kaji01 · Post by **Kaji01** » Sun Feb 08, 2004 7:43 pm

I guess everybody has their own method...

Personally, I right click on the page and hit "View Source" and do a search through the source code for an address ending in "*.swf". From there I go to an MB (preferably not this one, as you can't delete posts), post the address on the board as a URL, and then right click and save as, deleting the post after I've saved the file...