Download TS files from video stream

Question

Videos on most sites make use of progressive downloading, which means that the video is downloaded to my computer, and easy to trace. There are lots of extensions out there

Answer 1

Easy youtube-dl example on macOS (in the command line Terminal; Windows supported too):

# List variants (resolutions/bitrates)
$ youtube-dl -F https://bitdash-a.akamaihd.net/content/MI201109210084_1/m3u8s/f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa.m3u8
[generic] f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa: Requesting header
[generic] f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa: Downloading m3u8 information
[info] Available formats for f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa:
format code           extension  resolution note
audio-English_stereo  mp4        audio only [en] 
628                   mp4        320x180     628k , avc1.42c00d, video only
928                   mp4        480x270     928k , avc1.42c00d, video only
1728                  mp4        640x360    1728k , avc1.42c00d, video only
2528                  mp4        960x540    2528k , avc1.42c00d, video only
4928                  mp4        1280x720   4928k , avc1.42c00d, video only
9728                  mp4        1920x1080  9728k , avc1.42c00d, video only (best)

# Choose a variant to download, and use its format code below
$ youtube-dl --format 628 https://bitdash-a.akamaihd.net/content/MI201109210084_1/m3u8s/f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa.m3u8
...
frame= 5257 fps=193 q=-1.0 Lsize=    6746kB time=00:03:30.16 bitrate= 263.0kbits/s speed=7.73x    
video:6679kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.998669%
[ffmpeg] Downloaded 6907810 bytes
[download] 100% of 6.59MiB in 00:29

$ open f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa-f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa.mp4

Use the browser's Developer Tools > Network to get the m3u8 (HLS manifest) URL when starting a streaming video.