Instructions to Download NBC Olympics Videos

09Jul08

I like to be able to download videos I watch online for repeat viewing, especially in case the video becomes unavailable online eventually. In most cases (if the video is from YouTube, say), the way to do this in Safari is fairly simple:

1). Go to Window (this is in the Menu Bar) and then Activity:

2). Find the video (this is usually obvious because it’s one of the largest files), double click, and it will download. Sometimes you have to change the extension of the file to flv and play it in VLC.

For example, let’s say you love Phantom of the Office and would like to download a copy. If you play it and then open Activity, you’d want to find the following link (it may look slightly different for you, but the 4.3 MB should be the same):

Then double click the 4.3 MB file, and a file “get_video” without an extension should download:

The just find the file, change the file name to “get_video.flv” and play it in VLC. You can convert the file to other formats, but that’s another issue altogether.

Lately, I’ve been wanting to download the videos that NBC has made available on their Olympics site, specifically the swimming videos, but they’re using this new Microsoft Silverlight player which has caused me some difficulty. But, I figured it out. There are a few extra steps in this case:

1). Find a video on the NBC Olympics site that you want to download. Let’s try the Women’s 200 Back Olympic Trials Final. The video should start playing after a 20 second ad.

2). In Safari, go to Window (this is in the Menu Bar) and then Activity as described above.

3). Im not sure if this works only for the swimming videos, but you will always be looking for a link that contains “STAMFORD” Place the mouse cursor over it. It should display the full link, which should look something like this:

There will sometimes be 2 or 3 copies of the video. It should be 0.2 KB. Double click any of the links.

4). A new window should open which should allow you to now watch the video in a Quicktime player in Safari. Once it finishes downloading/playing, click the upside down triangle in the bottom right of the player. Click “Save as Quicktime Movie.”

5). You should be able to play the file in Quicktime or iTunes now.

UPDATE: This doesn’t seem to be working for the actual Olympics videos (the original posting was for Olympics Trials videos). When I figure this out, I’ll post the solution.

Filed under: Computing, Sports, Swimming, Technology   |  1 Comment
Tags: Olympics