Requirements

Basic requirements:

• perl >= 5.8.0
• WWW::Mechanize (but not for the combined version, see OSX below).

Optional requirements (for support for certain sites):

• rtmpdump (see section below)
• XML::Simple
• Data::AMF
• Compress::Zlib

Various operating systems

Debian / Ubuntu packaged version

Run the following commands in a terminal, this installs it system-wide.

 sudo apt-get install libwww-mechanize-perl libxml-simple-perl
 wget http://get-flash-videos.googlecode.com/files/get-flash-videos_1.18-1_all.deb
 sudo dpkg -i get-flash-videos_1.18-1_all.deb

Then, to download something:

 get_flash_videos url..

See UsageExamples for more.

Other Linux/Unix-like OS

Install the Perl modules WWW::Mechanize (required) and XML::Simple (required for some sites). Preferably install the packaged versions of these provided by your distribution. If you can't, install the modules off CPAN - see the perlmodinstall documentation for more information.

Then run the following commands in a terminal, this installs get-flash-videos system-wide.

 sudo wget http://get-flash-videos.googlecode.com/files/get_flash_videos-1.18 -O /usr/local/bin/get_flash_videos
 sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/get_flash_videos

Then, to download something:

 get_flash_videos url..

See UsageExamples for more.

Windows

Install ActivePerl, making sure you tell the installer to add perl's bin directory to your PATH.

Install the Perl modules WWW::Mechanize (required) and XML::Simple (required for some sites). You can install these using ActivePerl's PPM tool.

Save get-flash-videos somewhere on your hard disk, for example c:\flash.

Then, to download something:

 Start -> Run -> cmd
 perl c:/flash/get_flash_videos url

We haven't tested rtmpdump on win32.

OSX

Run the following commands in a terminal, this installs it in your home directory.

 curl -o get_flash_videos http://get-flash-videos.googlecode.com/files/combined-get_flash_videos-1.18
 chmod a+x get_flash_videos

Then, to download something:

 ./get_flash_videos url..

See UsageExamples for more.

Note you may also need to install the Perl modules XML::Simple and Data::AMF for support for some sites.

rtmpdump

get_flash_videos can download videos from servers over RTMP, this needs rtmpdump. You can get a copy of rtmpdump from here, or from http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu. If you compile it or use an unpackaged version you should copy this to somewhere on your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin).

Using get_flash_videos

See the manpage for details on how to use get_flash_videos.