<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <title>metacafe-dl: Download videos from metacafe.com</title> <style type="text/css"><!-- body { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; } h1 { text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; color: #006699; } h2 { color: #006699; } p { text-align: justify; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; } ul { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; list-style-type: square; } li { margin-bottom: 0.5ex; } #copyright { font-size: x-small; text-align: center; } --></style> </head> <body> <h1>metacafe-dl: Download videos from metacafe.com</h1> <h2>What is it?</h2> <p><em>metacafe-dl</em> is a small command-line program to download videos from metacafe.com, based on the code of <a href="http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/">youtube-dl</a>. Hence, it has the same requirements and features, and its syntax is very similar. The latest version is <strong>2008.07.23</strong>. It's also licensed under the MIT License.</p> <p>As with <em>youtube-dl</em>, I'll try to keep it updated if metacafe.com changes the way you access their videos, but the same circumstances apply. My contact information is at <a href="http://freshmeat.net/~rg3/">freshmeat.net</a>.</p> <h2>Usage instructions</h2> <p>In Windows, once you have installed the Python interpreter, save the program with the <em>.py</em> extension and put it somewhere in the PATH. Follow the <a href="http://rg03.wordpress.com/youtube-dl-under-windows-xp/">guide to install youtube-dl under Windows XP</a>, as the instructions for <em>metacafe-dl</em> are identical.</p> <p>In Unix, download it, give it execution permission and copy it to one of the PATH directories (typically, <em>/usr/local/bin</em>).</p> <p>After that, you should be able to call it from the command line as <em>metacafe-dl</em> or <em>metacafe-dl.py</em>. I will use <em>metacafe-dl</em> in the following examples. Usage instructions are easy. Use <em>metacafe-dl</em> followed by a video URL. Example: <em>metacafe-dl "http://www.metacafe.com/watch/somecode/blah/etc"</em>. The video will be saved to the file <em>somecode.flv</em> in that example. As metacafe.com videos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be <em>flv</em>. In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of <em>ffmpeg</em> can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, etc. Those two work under Windows and other platforms, but you could also get a specific FLV player of your taste.</p> <p>If you try to run the program and you receive an error message containing the keyword <em>SyntaxError</em> near the end, it means your Python interpreter is too old.</p> <h2>More usage tips</h2> <ul> <li>You can change the file name of the video using the -o option, like in <em>metacafe-dl -o vid.flv "http://www.metacafe.com/watch/somecode/blah/etc"</em>.</li> <li>The <em>simulate mode</em> (activated with -s or --simulate) can be used to just get the real video URL and use it with a download manager if you prefer that option.</li> <li>The <em>quiet mode</em> (activated with -q or --quiet) can be used to supress all output messages. This allows, in systems featuring /dev/stdout and other similar special files, outputting the video data to standard output in order to pipe it to another program without interferences.</li> <li>The default filename is <em>video_id.flv</em>. But you can also use the video title in the filename with the -t or --title option. For this, the URL must include the video title, which is the typical case.</li> <li>The program can be told to simply print the final video URL to standard output using the -g or --get-url option.</li> <li><em>metacafe-dl</em> honors the <em>http_proxy</em> environment variable if you want to use a proxy. Set it to something like <em>http://proxy.example.com:8080</em>, and do not leave the <em>http://</em> prefix out.</li> <li>You can get the program version by calling it as <em>metacafe-dl -v</em> or <em>metacafe-dl --version</em>.</li> <li>For usage instructions, use <em>metacafe-dl -h</em> or <em>metacafe-dl --help.</em></li> <li>You can cancel the program at any time pressing Ctrl+C. It may print some error lines saying something about <em>KeyboardInterrupt</em>. That's ok.</li> </ul> <h2>Download it</h2> <p>Note that if you directly click on these hyperlinks, your web browser will most likely display the program contents. It's usually better to right-click on it and choose the appropriate option, normally called <em>Save Target As</em> or <em>Save Link As</em>, depending on the web browser you are using.</p> <p><a href="metacafe-dl">2008.07.23</a></p> <ul> <li><strong>MD5</strong>: 0dae19883b0e13286a1fa543751a242f</li> <li><strong>SHA1</strong>: 70bba7248701728e2f69ddb2cf9dae13501167a5</li> <li><strong>SHA256</strong>: d7826ab9506d73904f16a6e1110af7607e96ce20d311c5d2b3b746b18af64ee5</li> </ul> <p id="copyright">Copyright © 2006-2007 Ricardo Garcia Gonzalez</p> </body> </html>