What about other embedded media? What about music?
Streaming music sites often convert the tracks you request into MP3 format for streaming.This technique requires you to see your network activity (so you know when the track has finished downloading) and then identify and rename the music file in your browser cache.
Of course, the music sites don’t want you to think about getting files from their service. They want you to see it as streaming. Some of it actually is, of course. You can identify these because they arrive in a steady small stream instead of a big lump. For our purposes, the lump is better. We can retrieve those.
First let’s look at monitoring network activity. I like an unobtrusive little “thank-you-ware” application called Bitmeter.
Less handy, because it stays on top and takes up a lot of screen real estate, but still workable, is using Windows built-in Task Manager.In Vista or Windows XP, right-click a blank area on the Windows toolbar and select “Task Manager.” Then click the Networking tab.
Next, you’ll need to know which folder contains your cache. This is easy. Using either Firefox 2 or 3, in the URL bar, type
about:cache
and press Enter. On the resulting page, find “Disk cache device.” Under it will be “Disk cache directory,” and that’s the location of the cache folder. Double-click on “Computer” or “My Computer” and navigate your way to that cache folder.Click View to change to detail view, and then click “Date Modified” to put the most recent files on the top.
Then, in Firefox, click to play the song you’ve selected. Look at your network activity, and then, when the song finishes downloading, look back at your cache folder. Your target file will probably be two to four megabytes, maybe a bit larger, and should appear right at the top of the list. It won’t have the extension .mp3. In fact, it may not have any extension at all, and Windows may show it as type “File.” That’s fine.
Right-click the file and using either “Rename” or “Properties,” add .mp3 on the end of the filename.
Then try playing it!
Note that this technique also works with websites that have an all-Flash web page, won't let you right-click and select "View Page Info."
So that’s two relatively easy methods for saving embedded files that Firefox does identify as media (like .swf files from YouTube) and those it does not.
Here’s a tip. If you plan to peer in your cache folder often, click “back” in your cache folder, right-click the “Cache” folder icon, and select “Send to Desktop.” That will create a shortcut allowing you to open it quickly.
