41 Comments

How-To: Download Music Videos from Yahoo Launch with Flashget

August 23, 2005 by in AV,Howto,Tech with 41 Comments

Update 10/16: The updated tutorial for download music videos from Yahoo! Launch is here: How-To: Downloading Yahoo! Music Videos with Firefox & VLC.

A few days back someone emailed in requesting a tutorial for downloading music videos from Yahoo! Launch. You asked. UNEASYsilence answers. Considering the vast library of music videos available through Launch, I figured that this “case study” would prove to be quite useful to a number of individuals. Namely, our UNEASY readers with a knack for music. I’m not even going to pretend I know what laws are possibly being violated. This is an educational post.

You’ll need two things to start downloading music videos (.wmv file format) to your hardrive. The first is a decent download manager which can handle mms:// URI’s. For this tutorial I used Flashget. It is a shareware download manager with a flashing banner which I ignored since 90% of the time it was in use it was in the system tray. I’m sure you internet veterans know how to get rid of the banner. The second is this link to Adam’s Stricky’s launch.yahoo.com study which utilizes a similar script to Stream Kings utility for discovering the mms:// based off the video ID.

On to the example shall we? Visit Yahoo! Music and log in using your Yahoo ID. For the sake of simplicity I’m going to use the first music video I see in the Top 10 list… Bow Wow – Like You. Right-click on the link and select ‘Properties’. In the link properties box you want to find the video ID by scrolling to the end of the displayed address. For Like You the ID is 22404336. Copy that ID number and paste it into the ‘video ID probe’ on Adam’s Stricky’s Launch study page. Click ‘submit query’.

On the next page, scroll down to the 300K Stream box. Copy the URI beginning with mms://. Paste that URI into Flashget by dragging the link on top of the Flashget system tray icon or by selecting Edit > Paste URL. Edit the save path, rename the file, and click ‘OK’.

After Flashget completes the download, you’ll find the complete music video on your desktop or wherever else you decided to save the file. Video resolution is 320 x 240.

I realized that this specific tutorial wasn’t very OS friendly. For that reason, I wrote up a second tutorial utilizing the VLC media player. The VLC media player is a cross platform media player which means that non-Windows users can download Yahoo Music Videos. Read the How-To: Download Music Videos from Yahoo Launch with VLC.


  • http://YAHOO.COM LSM

    THE VERRY GOOD WEB SITE FOR YAHOO.COM

  • http://www.applian.com Bill Dettering

    WM Recorder is an easier way to do this — combining StreamKing and FlashGet.

    You can download a fre trial from http://www.applian.com

  • Seb

    Hey! This is Strix not ADAM!!

  • http://strix.org.uk Stricky

    Hey! Seb’s right, my name’s Stricky. Anyhoo, it’s not Streamking’s utility (www.streamking.com is currently… not there), he wrote a simmilar script back in the days when Launch streams were static MMS things. Though he deserves credit for the idea, I don’t have permission to use his name. Thanks for all the traffic :-)

    strix

  • http://uneasysilence.com Derek Punsalan

    Corrected. Thanks Stricky!.

  • Nfect1soul

    Link doesn’t work to Adam’s Launch study or Stricky’s launch study any alternative?

  • http://uneasysilence.com Derek Punsalan

    @Nfect1soul: The entire strix site seems to be down at the moment. Most likely server issues. I’ll keep checking to see if I can through.

  • Nfect1soul

    aslong as theres a hint that it will be up thats good enough for me…

  • http://www.strix.org.uk Stricky

    Sorry folks, local power failure, should be back up now.

  • Nfect1soul

    still nada my friend..just curious but where is this server based?

  • http://uneasysilence.com Derek Punsalan

    Stricky informed me that it’s a problem with his ISP. Sit tight. I’m sure it will be up soon enough. Once it’s back up I’ll see about creating a mirror.

  • Nfect1soul

    Thank you for informing me and everyone else.

  • Nfect1soul

    I have a question about yahoo’s launch plus service 700k quality video..i plan to subscribe in a couple of days and i was wonder if that video ID probe supports its video ID’s

  • Nfect1soul

    wondering*

  • http://uneasysilence.com Derek Punsalan

    OK Stricky’s page is back up. Something went bonkers.

    @Nfect1soul: right now Stricky’s page does not support the 700K streams. He’s asking me to look for anyone with an SBC Yahoo subscription. If anyone has one of those, email me using the tips@uneasysilence address. Put SBC 700K in the subject line.

  • Nfect1soul

    alrighty

  • Carlos

    can you burn the videos when downladed?

    I downloaded Frankie J’s “More Than Words” and it does work, however windows doesn’t recognize it.

    so everytime I want to watch it, a message asks me to chose a program to open the file, I choose windows media player and it works ok. However, I can’t check the box where it says “pick this program for the all same types of files” so I’m not able to burn the video.

    some helP?

  • Derek Punsalan

    @Carlos: I tried burning a music video from Yahoo a few days ago. Are you remembering to manually add the .wmv extension to the end of the raw file? If the file has the .wmv extension it should be recognized by your default WMV player (WMP or VLC).

    1. Import the video into WMP (Windows Media Player 10)
    2. Copy to CD or Device
    3. Click the copy button in the top right corner.

    WMP will burn the video to disk allowing you to insert the CD into any computer with WMP.

  • Carlos

    thank you so much IT WORKED!

    another question, on FLASHGET I was downloading a music video and it downloaded until 96% :(
    is there a way to resume broken downloads?

  • Carlos

    Stricky’s Launch study page doesn’t work anymore. it gives the following message.

    I’ve taken this page down following a cease and desist from Launch UK, I’m currently considering the available options. More details soon.

    Is there any other website I could use?

  • http:/// Derek Punsalan

    Sit tight… Stay tuned.

  • Nick

    will do

  • carlos

    Sit tight… Stay tuned.

    sorry, can’t do that

  • Derek Punsalan

    Keep yourself occupied with this tutorial here until we sort this Yahoo business out. Then again, maybe you can come up with an alternative method?

  • Zach

    That Link still doesn’t work.

  • Daniel

    where can I get the mms:// bcoz the link is broken or removed.

  • snoopy

    hey where can i get this mms thing the site is not working is therr anyother site for getting this mms plz informe me abt this

  • http://www.ahsanxr.com ahsan

    is there any other site to get the “mms://” link? the stricky site isnt working. please tell soon

  • RARA AVIS

    i tried the stricky site, too. it’s not working. like all others, any alterntives? it’d be cool.

  • marko

    where da fuck could we get another utility for identifying the video url!?

  • Derek

    marko.. read our other tutorial here.

  • Upol

    hey how come sticky’s website doesn’t come in my browser. does any esp settings need to be changed?

  • Name

    sticky’s website took off the mms identifier thing!!!

  • http://damn_eyes20.blogs.friendster.com kishy

    i want to know how to place a media player in my blog.. pls tell me how ASAP! i reli dont know how. according to the instruction, it should me in url format! i want the video be playing once im on the blog page.. pls…

  • http://damN-eyes20.blogs.friendster.com kishy

    hope you guys can help me… pls… tnx

  • rahul

    is it possible to download 300k windows media video in high quality

  • Manoj

    I know sites that offer free music video codes for webpages. Is it possible to download the actual video?

  • Noob

    Strix’s web site does not load….. is it a broken link or does it not exist anymore?

  • http://yahoo.com Maggie

    so how do you download a music video to my computer?!??!?!!?! i still don’t get it!!!!! so is this going to be free or do you have to pay for it?!?!?!?!!?!?

  • carlos

    Is it just me or is there no video ID probe search thing in strickys website I’ve been looking all over the page I don’t see it anywhere

  • Harry

    The stricky launh study dont work…It gives some google video search thing…what to do now with the Video id

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