URL of video from a site

[naark]

i want to ask here of how to find the url of the video embedded from a site.. my question was not so specific so i'll try to give an example..
for example at youtube.com the video file that they upload from their server has an extension of .flv but upon looking at the source code of their site(or a certain page on their site) you cannot find an flv file there.. so is it still linked to another file? how will i look for it?

by the way my question was not specifically intended just for youtube's source code i want to know of how was it done even on other video sharing sites....
i know every site has their own coding but i'll wait for as many answers as i can have here... thanks...

[rocknbil]

It's possible the actual URL is in the included Javascript. You may see something like this,

<p id="video-placeholder"><img src="loading-video-please-wait.jpg" alt="loading video"></p>

... and external Javascript uses SWFObject or some other mechanism to write the video code to the video-placeholder div.

Or, along the same lines, some Javascript feed could be populating the video area from an external site, in which case there's likely no telling how it comes in. You might get some information by inspecting the elements via FireBug.

[naark]

hmmm... about the firebug.. is it an easy to use tool or how will i use it? i'm not a professional web designer here or a graduate of a course related to it but i'm certain that i know basics of js and html... so would that be enough for me to use firebug for inspecting codes and then come up of what i'm looking for?!?


by the way sorry for late reply... got a little busy.. and still thanks for the advice

[g1smd]

Look at View > Page Info > Media and see what's listed there.

[alt131]

Hi naark and welcome to WebmasterWorld :)

so would that be enough for me to use firebug for inspecting codes and then come up of what I'm looking for?!?

I would expect so. Like all tools you need to familiarise yourself, but I'd be surprised if you had real difficulties.

Just checked the firebug site - a real challenge to document something so powerful and clever. That does make it look a bit complicated, but although there is lots "under the hood", I think it is one of the rare tools that is "obvious" from the start. Definitely try it.

[naark]

ok.. thanks guys for the help...