Livestream.com: Tips for downloading live events
Livestream.com broadcasts around 6 million events a year and is used by services such as The New York Times, BBC, TED, CMA, Fox and many others.
A few months back livestream.com started using a streaming protocol combination of https/web sockets from their adobe flash player to stream video over. We haven't yet implemented support for detecting video streamed over a web sockets/https combination, though we do support detection when video is streamed over a web sockets/http combination.
Anyway, that's all technical stuff you probably don't want to know about ;)
So how then can we download livestream.com streams?
The trick is to get your browser to use a non-flash player!
The method I am going to describe uses Google Chrome, though any browser (or browser plugin) that makes the site think it is on a mobile device will work. User Agent switching plugins also work great.
I'm using foxal.com (which is a livestream.com stream) in my example below, but the same steps will work for any livestream.com site. livestream.com/watch has all the latest streams.
- In Google Chrome go to www.foxla.com;
- In Google Chrome press Ctrl-Shift-J (all at the same time) to go into developer mode;
- At the top of the window select "iPad" from the dropdown list. The view will change to an iPad view;
- Switch on AUTO mode in JMR
- In Google Chrome now go to the page hosting the livestream.com (www.foxla.com/live). Jaksta Media Recorder will pick up the streams and you will be presented with a few qualities/formats to choose from. Sel
- Jaksta Media Recorder will pick up the streams and you will be presented with a few qualities/formats to choose from. Double-click the one you want to download.
Three Power Tips for Downloading video from Livestream.com
- If you have a favourite or preferred format and quality, select these as your preferred settings. The stream that most closely matches will be automatically selected and downloaded.
- If your preferred format and quality are not available from livestream.com, select an appropriate conversion setting and have any stream you download automatically converted to that format and quality.
- Install a User Agent Switcher plugin for your browser. Use google to find one for the browser you use - search for "user agent switcher plugin <browser name>". Once installed the plugin should make it simple to switch to an iPad view.
