Sunday, March 15, 2009

Save Flash-videos in KDE 4.2

Save Flash-videos you just have seen or are watching on internet in a super-easy way:

In KDE 4.2 with folder-view POWER.


  • Watch (tip: remember to tick off watch in high quality if it is possible on youtube) or let the whole flash-video download (let the progress bar reach the end) in the browser using Flash-player. Don't close the tab in the browser if you want to save it.
  • Drag the video from the folder-view-directory to another folder-view-directory on your desktop or a directory in dolphin and select; copy here.
  • Right-click the video in your destination-directory and rename it with a .flv extension (like somename.flv).

The video will remain in the folder-view-directory as long as it is open in the browser. Close the tab, select another video or close the browser; and it will disappear after a wile.



How to set this up
(this is also super-easy and can be done without need for a keyboard)
Do this only once:


(You have to have Adobe-Flash-player working in the browser and have a KDE4.2 desktop)

  1. Find the "cashew" in the upper right corner of your screen and click unlock screen-elements if it is locked and then add screen-element.
  2. Find the Folder-view in the list and drag one into the desktop (tip: drag one more witch you can use as a destination-directory for the videos).
  3. Move your mouse over the newly created directory-view to select the setup-tool.
  4. In setup; 1. select directory 2. click here to bring up directory-chooser 3. click on Root 4. choose the tmp-directory and click OK.
  5. Still in setup; 1. select Filter 2. select hide files 3. click select all 4. uncheck the Flash-video in the list 5. click OK.

  • Use setup on the additional folder-view if you created one in step 2. select a directory of your choice to store the videos in.
  • Click the cashew and click lock screen-elements again if you done personalizing your desktop (see step 1).



After seeing tips on how to save online videos in linux again, I remembered the first time I saw this tip. I thought it was brilliant and tested it back then once. Since then; I know I had the power to save flash-videos, but didn't because it was to many step to do and that interfered with what I was doing; browsing the web. Since I newly discovered the power of folder-views and saw the tip again yesterday, I thought this could be more comforting to use wile doing the casual browsing.