URL sniffer/downloader

Posted by Ricket on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Ricket
Published on 2009-07-29T22:19:33Z Indexed on 2010/05/13 21:04 UTC
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Some websites have Flash content that plays music or videos. Most of the time they don't show you the URL of these music or videos, but for example, you can sniff a YouTube webpage and find the flv file that YouTube is actually requesting and playing.

Right now I'm using Orbit Downloader, which has a feature called Grab++ that does just this; you start it, and then you refresh the page, and it shows you all files of certain types (image, audio, video) that the webpage requests, and then you can select one or more and download and it downloads them. But, I don't like Orbit, it installs plugins and has the whole download manager thing which I don't really want.

What is a good alternative program? I'm not looking for websites like kickyoutube.com, I want a URL sniffer I guess. HTTPGuideDog used to be my Firefox add-on that did exactly this, but it hasn't been updated even to FF3 (and yes I know I can hack it to load anyway, I'm looking for something natively available preferably).

I vaguely know of WireShark but last time I used it, I believe it captures individual packets, which is a little too fine-tuned for me. I just want to be able to see what's happening, and download something that the webpage downloaded.

Oh, and I'm using Windows 7. Linux probably has some fancy command-line tool, but it just won't cut it for me. :-\

Edit: Oh, and something free please. Feel free to mention paid solutions though.

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