Odd tmp/Flashxxxxx files

[Perry]

Hi,

(Hardy and Jaunty)
I have been struggling for 2 days trying to record sound or video playing in 
Firefox. (sound works and I can record from microphone)
For sound I read that Audacity should be able to record from the soundcard but 
it doesn't display a drop down menu to select the input (as it should)
Alsamixer displays 2 capture bars and volume is not 0.
I played with settings in Kmix, Alsamixer, Audacity; tried arecord...to no 
avail. I investigated streaming (don't know much about it) but the progamm 
asked for an URL and didn't  work with the URL of the page I was viewing. 
Plenty of googling and the most "reasonable" way around was to connect with a 
cable the sound output with the sound input...pityfull!

So I tried to record the video (it often comes with the sound) and found out 
that while Firefox has an open tab with your video, /tmp will contain a file 
with a name like Flash0Zyhy5 (that you must copy elsewhere before closing the 
FF tab because the file is removed from /tmp). This Flash file was important 
because I couldn't download a file (didn't know how to find it if it existed 
*see on bottom of the page*)

Now I tried those files with Dragon player, mplayer and Kaffeine.
Some files worked,others displayed:
in mplayer	LAUF_LEADER: av_find_stream_info(0) failed
...		or Cannot find codec for audio format 0xA
in Kaffeine:	Codec package already installed
in Dragon Player:	vido played, image OK but horrible hiss on top of 
		(recognisable) sound

I find it odd that Firefox is able to play correctly a video and write 
a /tmp/Flash file that the other programs cannot play. 
Are these only bugs we have to live with, or does someone knows something 
helpful?



I hope the following last note might help someone, even if I don't get answers 
to the original question which is still not concluded: say you want to record 
the sound from a game playing on your computer, you have no file at hand and 
nothing to download (so just plug a cable to connect the sound output with 
the sound...how elegant!)

As a last note: Firefox extension "Downloadhelper" helped me download files 
related to the video I was viewing and there might be ways to extract just 
the sound from those flv files, it seemed to work even when the Flash file 
didn't, I still must experiment on that.


Thanks for any input	Perry


-- 
BOFH excuse #79: Look, buddy:  Windows 3.1 IS A General Protection Fault.