Downloading jwplayer video thats been secured?

I am trying to download a jwplayer flash video from my university site which is a recording of a lecture. To access this video, you must have a link. It directs you to a university site with a jwplayer video. Once you have that link, anyone can watch it (I’d rather not post it publicly). This is where it gets interesting. When the page loads, jwplayer plays a 3-second video that is simply a picture. No matter where I click in the seekbar, I cannot watch anything other than this picture/video. After the 3 seconds, the video recording appears and you can seek anywhere in the player. This is different from most other video sites in that I can usually go to the page source and find the raw video link. None exists for this page. The next thing I try is Google Chrome -> go to site -> open developer tools -> Network and then sort by size whereby the video link is usually the first result. Again, this doesn’t work. Does anyone know what this security feature is called and how I can bypass it to download the video?
Thanks very much
Answer #1
Use a screen capture program and record it 1:1. Unfortunately, it’s the only way AFAIK.
Answer #2
The link might be stored in the player code itself, meaning it wouldn’t be visible in the page source. There’s a FF addon called DownloadHelper that can extract links some of the time, so you could try that Otherwise, you can try decompiling the .swf and look for the link in there, or you can run Wireshark before viewing the video and look for the request that fetches the video.
Answer #3
Will you PM me the link and I’ll have a play to see what i can see..
Answer #4
The link might be stored in the player code itself, meaning it wouldn't be visible in the page source. There's a FF addon called DownloadHelper that can extract links some of the time, so you could try that Otherwise, you can try decompiling the .swf and look for the link in there, or you can run Wireshark before viewing the video and look for the request that fetches the video.
Thanks for responding. I decided to decompile the .swf using showmycode.com and it has about 13000 lines. Not to mention, its a generic .swf link that the entire site uses http://(sitename).edu/js/mediaplayer/players.swf. I haven’t tried wireshark yet.
And I pm’d you
Answer #5
Yup, got it, played.. and found a way.. long winded as it involves saving the stream on-the-fly.
But at least you’ll have a copy.
Answer #6
Yup, got it, played.. and found a way.. long winded as it involves saving the stream on-the-fly.
But at least you'll have a copy.
Hm…odd that you weren’t able to get the URL directly. Or was it an RTSP stream?
Answer #7
RTMPE stream with a dynamically created address for each viewing (possibly for each segment too)
Far more security than the actual video warrants – who else would want it but a damn student anyway!?
Probably another college – another example of how DRM screws the legitimate users in the attempt to stop someone else nicking it.
Answer #8
More than likely they just bought someone else’s code and used that. My experience with college IT departments is that they’re not the brightest out there.
What these idiots (video DRM pushers in general) don’t realise is that if their data is so valuable and has a large enough audience to make them money, someone will just rip it with a screen capture tool; if it hasn’t been done already, it’s because not enough people are interested, i.e. their audience is too small for the DRM to serve any purpose.
Answer #9
More than likely they just bought someone else's code and used that. My experience with college IT departments is that they're not the brightest out there.
What these idiots (video DRM pushers in general) don't realise is that if their data is so valuable and has a large enough audience to make them money, someone will just rip it with a screen capture tool; if it hasn't been done already, it's because not enough people are interested, i.e. their audience is too small for the DRM to serve any purpose.
Excellent summation of DRM!
It really only ever hurts the paying customer..