Downloading videos (in flash applications) using python

[Rustom Mody]

On Tuesday, February 3, 2015 at 4:51:18 AM UTC+5:30, Gabriel Ferreira wrote:
> Mark Lawrence  wrote:
> 
> > I don't actually know, but could you please provide some context and 
> > write in plain English, those damn ... things are extremely annoying.
> > 
> 
> Hi, Mark. 
> 
> I am developing a research project, which includes video analysis (computer vision, big data, data mining, etc). The first part of the project is about building a database containing a big amount of video of urban zones. I live in Brazil, so the plan is collecting videos from urban areas of Brazilian big cities, like Sao Paulo. 
> 
> I have to make this task "automatic". in other words, I don't want to manually download hundreds or thousands hours of videos. So I have to develop a "robot" to do that assingment for me. (I wish I could do that using Python).

Develop robot -- right
Do it in python -- probably not so right

> 
> I have found a good website that provides me live images from several cities in Brazil. So that's it! That's what I need. I was expecting to develop a program to record & download those videos, that are being broadcasted live on that website. So I would be able to form my database and continue my research.
> 
> The problem is that this particular website uses a flash player application do broadcast the live images of the urban areas. I'm not too familiar with Flash Applications. I don't know how to deal with them using Python. I was wondering if someone could help me solve this problem. The goal is recording & downloading those videos, from the mentioned website. And, yes, it has to be an automated program (no manual work).

The instinct is natural but probably inaccurate:
Python is nice; JS/Flash not so much.

However to get on top of this you probably need to debug the streaming
with a modern browser using JS developer-tools/firebug etc, so that then
you can script what you have debugged.

If you do it in JS, there will be minor glitches once you have debugged the process.
If you do it in python, you will have to jump into (rather out of) many hoops
to go from JS to python.
And debugging the process is not an option.

[Disclaimer: I dont know what I am talking about]