Embedded Media URL Sniffer?

[mocham]

I cannot find an application in Linux to sniff the URL from embedded media such as audio streams from a radio station's webpage. This is the primary usage I need. There was an app in Windows called "URL Snooper", anything like that in Linux? I tried ntop and Wireshark, but I don't see anywhere in these programs to decode the full URL..

[r0lZ]

Welcome to the forum!

Not sure it does what you need, but have you tried the MediaPlayerConnectivity extension for Firefox? The VideoDownloader extension might be useful too.

[WalterK]

I have not found a program to replace UrlSnooper in Linux
However, heres what i have discovered for embedded media.
1) WMV/ASF/MOV/RAM/RM/WMA
All can be saved if the mplayer browser plugin is used. If thats not what you want to use then a simple right click and selecting copy url will allow to paste the true url into a download manager.
But sometimes with streaming WMV/WMA media the url will be of the mms version for that use the cmdline mms stream downloader mimms (it should be in your distros repos) or mplayer to save the stream to your harddrive , if cmdline is not your thing then theres a frontend to mimms called Gmimms (this you will have to compile yourself) http://gmimms.sourceforge.net/

2) SWF/FLV
Flash media once downloaded is stored in the tmp directory of your system a simple copy from there to your home directory nets you the flash video.
Use the latest mplayer with the latest svn ffmpeg for playback or convert to something else using mencoder or ffmpeg or the relevant frontend like avidemux.
Note the flash video will not have an ending extension like say .flv or .swf it will usually but not always begin with the word "Flash" followed by a bunch of letters or numbers.

[mocham]

Just installed GMiMMS, very nice thanks for the tip!

Actually what I have the hardest time is with sniffing the stream URL from flash based players like on many commercial radio station's webpages. I don't care about saving the files necessarily, I just like to grab the URLs so I can stick them in my gxine or streamtuner bookmarks. I don't like to have to see all the ads and bullshit, just listen to the music!

The Firefox mplayer plugin is wonderful when a webpage uses a format that it can play. All I have to do is "copy URL", unfortunately it doesn't seem to be that simple for the Flash players.

I have VideoDownloader installed in Firefox, it's nice, the MediaPlayerConnectivity plugin I didn't like.

There must be some solution for Linux! I'm really surprised it's so hard to find!

[WalterK]

The latest flash audio and video stream uses a closed source protocol called rtmp which nobody on linux has yet reversed engineered.
Also i don't think you can remove the ads that play on it.
Windows Payware Programs like Replay Media Catcher and FLV Recorder allows the recording of these, and they have not shared the secret of how they do it with the programing world (after all they would go out of business if someone came along and wrote an opensource program thats similiar)
You can record flash based audio using Audacity just about any audio thats being pipped through your system can be recorded using Audacity.
Beyond that i don't think theres anyway else at present to record flash using that protocol in linux.

[mocham]

Thanks for the info. Isn't there some way to use Wireshark to sniff the URL? I mean, it's capable of sniffing and decoding each packet, so the data must be there. But I haven't figured out how to parse out full URLs from it. I will keep researching.