Odd tmp/Flashxxxxx files

[Nigel Ridley]

Perry wrote:
> 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
> 
> 

I use DownloadHelper (Firefox Addon) and then VLC to play the .flv videos.

Blessings,

Nigel