Saving streams from the TG4 player

I notice that howto guides on doing this seems to change frequently. This worked for me in early January 2013 and will probably be out of date soon. I use Linux... but I'm sure these instructions can be adapted for other OSes.

You will need rtmpdump.

Open a decent modern browser (eg Chrome or Firefox) and open the developer tools. Monitor HTTP traffic with the tools while you open the program you wish to record. When the program starts you will see several GET and POST requests in the background. Look for a request which features a fragment that looks something like this:


mp4:videos/1290862567001/1290862567001_2032327037001_WCL016084-14-4.mp4

This will form the -y parameter of the rtmpdump command.

Also look for traffic going to a host that looks like cp156323.edgefcs.net. The host name part of that address may vary. Match the host name in the -r parameter to this host name.

 Now try this (making the adjustments mentioned above):


rtmpdump -r "rtmpe://cp156323.edgefcs.net/ondemand"  \
-y "mp4:videos/1290862567001/1290862567001_2032327037001_WCL016084-14-4.mp4" \
-o myvideo.flv

These instructions may also apply to the RTE player, but I haven't tried it.