How-To: Downloading Yahoo! Music Videos with Firefox & VLC
Update 12/29: For a streamlined method of retrieving the required MMS:// URi, check our latest tutorial: How-To: Download music videos from Yahoo with LyFOX & VLC.
Update 10/17: Do something with your new WMV video collection. Convert the videos and import them into iTunes: How-To: Convert WMV to MOV for playback in iTunes [Windows].
Hat tip to Adam for helping throw this updated tutorial together for downloading Yahoo! Music Videos. I know a few readers were waiting patiently for updates to our How-To: Download Music Videos from Yahoo Launch with VLC, How-To: Download Music Videos from Yahoo Launch with Flashget, and How-To: Download 700K music video streams from Yahoo. As a forewarning, the first run through will be a bit tedious.
If you don’t have Firefox and the very useful GreaseMonkey Firefox extension installed on your system, you will not be able to complete this tutorial.
Step 1: Install the PKLaunch userscript. There are two versions. On for both OSX and Windows users. Windows users right-click here and select “Install user script”. OSX users do the same here.
Step 2: Sign in with your Yahoo account on Yahoo! Launch. Select the music video of your choice. PKLaunch will force the music video to open a new window for video playback. Make note of the drop down menu which offers different video bandwidth options. If you recall our previous tutorials, the 700K streams are higher quality videos usually reserved for SBC Yahoo! customers.
Step 3: The next step requires that you open an “info” window on the currently playing video. OSX users press ‘CMD + I’ and Windows users select ‘Tools > Page Info’ from the toolbar menu.
In the ‘Information’ window select the ‘Media’ tab. With the stream address highlighted, select the ‘Save As..’ button at the bottom of the window. When prompted with the ‘Save As..’ window, change the “medialog.ASP” filename to “medialog.TXT”.
Step 4: Open the “medialog.TXT” file in the plain text editor of your choice. Highlight the entire .ASX address and save it to your clipboard (Windows: CTRL + C; OSX: CMD + C).
Step 5: Open VLC. Go to ‘File > Open Network Stream’. Paste the previously copied .ASX address into the ‘HTTP / FTP / MMS / RTSP’ field. Make sure that the ‘Advanced / Stream output’ box at the bottom of the window is unchecked.
Step 6: This next step will differ depending on your OS. With the stream playing in VLC:
Windows users: Select ‘View > Playlist’. In the ‘Playlist’ window expand the entries until you locate a time block. It will look something like -(0:04:01). Right-click on the item and select ‘Info’. The URi field will contain the coveted MMS:// URi.
OSX users: While the stream is playing, hit CMD + I. The MMS:// address is in the URi field. Copy the address and close the window.
Step 7: Return to the main VLC window. Go to ‘File > Open Network Stream’. Paste the MMS:// URi into the ‘HTTP / FTP / MMS / RTSP’ field. Make sure that ‘Advanced / Stream Output’ is checked and select the ‘Settings’ button. In the ‘Settings’ box select the ‘File’ radio button. Specify the save path and title the video filename.WMV. Lastly, check the ‘Dump Raw Output’ box and click ‘OK’ through the settings windows. VLC will download the video to your specified directory.
If you find step by step text tutorials challenging to follow, check out the Flash video here (Windows users).
