Movies Extractor Scout Lite scans the Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera caches for flash files (.SWF, .EXE, .FLV, and shockwave), enabling you to extract download links for them, play them, or export BMP images from these into your hard drive.
If you’ve ever wanted to download flash or shockwaves movies animations or games this program can help.
Movies Extractor Scout Lite scans the Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera caches for all flash files and provides you with a download link where you can easily download them.
I have used this program to successfully download flash animations, and Youtube videos. I’ve had mixed results with Shockwave games; I was able to easily download some but not others (many shockwave games aren’t packaged neatly into a single file, making it more complicated to download them).
How it works: when you view flash files within your browser these files are saved into your browser’s cache directory. Movies Extractor Lite will look into this directory and make a list all the flash files that are there, and will enable you to view them as well as obtain a download link for where you can download them on the net. I am unclear as to why it does not seem to enable you to simple save them from the cache into the directory of your choice, but this hardly matters, as the download link provided will suffice.
How to use this program:
- Since the program will look into the cache, it may be be a good idea to clean your cache first (use CCleaner). This is optional, but will make it easier to quickly find what you want.
- Use one of the three above mentioned browsers and view the flash file you are interested in. Make sure the video/animation/game is fully loaded. Do this for all the files that you need.
- You can then close your browser and run Movie Extractor Scout, where you will be presented with a list of all flash files in the cache (see screenshot)
- Browse the list of flash files, then right-click on the file you are interested in and choose ‘Copy URL to flash movie’
- Once you have this you can paste it into your browser address bar to start downloading.
- You can use your browser to view the file once it is downloaded, or you can use the Movies Extractor Scout Lite program itself. There are also free flash player programs that you can use like Riva FLV Player for FLV. You could also convert .SWF files into standalone executables with ApecSoft’s SWF2EXE.
Differences between the Lite and paid version: the lite version does not support viewing .FLV files without a watermark, and purportedly does not allow downloading .FLV videos from YouTube and Google Video (not sure what this means, because I was able to successfully obtain the URL and download a YouTube video with the lite version). In any case if you want a free program to download YouTube and Google videos Check out Vdownloader. There are other small differences between the lite and paid versions that are not significant.
For saving flash files, this is probably the best free program out there. Highly recommended.
Version tested: 2.31
Go to the program page for the latest version.
